


Parts Answering Parts

by Jedi Amoira (Darcerenity)



Category: Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 - Fandom, Mass Effect 3 - Fandom
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Angst and Humor, Angst and Romance, F/M, Other, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-24 16:22:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 20
Words: 22,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3775348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darcerenity/pseuds/Jedi%20Amoira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The slow evolution of relationships, particularly that between Shepard and Garrus. </p>
<p>A random assortment of scenes and snippets relating to ME 1, 2 and 3. Not chronological. Various POV, largely FemShep and Garrus. Both Kaidan and Garrus romances possible. Spoilers probable.</p>
<p>All fics/chapters previous to 4/18/15 have been previously posted on FF.Net and are still available there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Blank Page

Waiting. 

I shifted on the blocky, nondescript sofa--I’d never quite been able to figure out what it was about modern society that dictated all furniture had to look exactly the same or that the standard had to be so milk-mild and boring as to be forgotten even when you were in the room with it, but... 

the furniture wasn’t my problem. Indicative of it, maybe. 

I felt like my entire life up to this point had been spent here, on this sofa, uncomfortable and unmoving, but not entirely fixed. Static. A hiss. 

White noise. 

What a way to describe a childhood.

Sitting here, waiting to sign it over, consign it to the history books, I wanted to look back on my childhood with one last valedictory glance. Tender, fleeting, bittersweet. 

The turning of a page. 

Maybe it will be. Maybe it is.

But the page is blank.

Waiting.

It is, oddly, the only fitting way to end my minority.

If only I weren’t so tired of it. 

Tired of waiting. 

I’ve done so much of it... try as I might to remember practical jokes, wild adventures, drunken parties, hopeful daydreams... what stands out, what remains constant through all the jumble of the years is the waiting.

Waiting in plain vanilla little rooms like this one, an anteroom to nothing-- or maybe everything-- a coffin, a box, a neat little package, all wrapped up and containing air, not hot, exactly, but warm--warm and a little stale. Containing me. 

Contained.

Constrained.

Never speaking, never taking action. 

Yes, that is me. 

Waiting.

Just waiting.

Waiting to be told Mom--or Dad--but usually Mom--has a new assignment. Waiting to be told we’re moving. 

Waiting to adjust to the new Alliance outpost. 

The new world. New gravity. New sun. New sky. New plants. New people. New expectations. New and new and new again... until the very new seems old. Or maybe just constant. Worn and repeated. Plain. Uninteresting. 

Like the room I’m in. 

Waiting, waiting, waiting to say goodbye, the final hug, the final kiss, the final walk up that long, narrow plank and into a ship... the final launch into the sky... again and again and again... the final isn’t final, and that’s a relief, but it always could be... and someday it will be... and you won’t know... not then, not until it’s over, not until it’s too late... waiting, always waiting, waiting to know when--if-- you will say hello... and then goodbye... again. 

It’s hard. The waiting.

Maybe the hardest part of it all is that it doesn’t really seem hard. It seems easy, far too easy. 

Waiting is being bored and worried and angry... but you can’t complain....

or you can complain as much as you want. 

I did more than my fair share of it. I remember. 

But my parents didn’t stop and listen. The Alliance didn’t stop and listen. The wide open sky, the distant rock vistas, the close dark trees, maybe they listened. Sometimes I thought they did... sometimes I knew they didn’t. 

Whatever was beyond them, the stars, the great black void, adulthood, eternity... 

whether they listen or not, there’s no telling. They’re unchanging. Unmoved.

And like them, whatever you tell them...

It is what it is and you have to live with it. 

Unless you prefer the alternative.

And most people don’t.

I hear the words in their voices--my mother’s voice tight and impatient, my father’s voice calm and almost amused--and I’m not sure if I’m smiling or scowling at the sound of them. 

And that is when I hear the recruitment officer call my name. 

I stand up and walk over to his console and hope like hell my step looks confident, because I can feel my knees shaking. 

He reels off the standard boilerplate. I hear all of it and listen to none of it. 

I am what I am, too.

I wish contracts were still signed with a pen or an old-fashioned computer stylus, something heavy, something I could feel the weight of in my hand. Something I could reach out and take... 

but there is just a glow of energy hovering above a plain, flat desk.

I know I can’t, but I think I can feel the slight warm hum of it washing up into my face, coloring my complexion, changing my face. 

I take a breath. 

This is it. 

Soon, I will be the one walking away. The one walking up that plank, and eventually back down it, full stories to tell. A veritable tome of experience, a vivid memory on every page.

I hold out a thumb, press it into the empty, oddly-lit space.


	2. Enter Garrus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard finds an unexpected and unconventional ally. Garrus finds an exciting opportunity to gain agency in a surprising way.

Garrus Vakarian was aware three humans had entered the Tower and stopped to stare at him with undisguised interest, blatantly eavesdropping on his argument with Executor Pallin, but he didn't particularly care.

 

Oh, he knew he was sure to hear about it later—from the Executor, from his father, and from everyone in between, all scandalized he hadn't simply accepted his superior's support of _his_ superior, like a good little turian, because that was _the way it was done_ , all absolutely outraged he'd dared to call that into question in front of a human—any human—let alone three of them.

 

He still didn't care.

 

Saren ranked above him, ranked above Executor Pallin, ranked above his father even. Garrus didn't dispute that Saren was above the rules; Garrus could respect that. In fact, he flat out envied it.

 

If he'd been above the rules or, rather, empowered to make rules when they were needed and to make those rules work...

 

But he wasn't. And he never would be. That chance had long since passed. And, because he knew and valued what he had lost, he recognized that Saren had it, and he realized that Saren didn't appreciate what he had.

 

Power was a privilege. One that had to be earned and earned again every time it was used. Used because it had to be...and never, ever, abused.

 

Saren abused it. With impunity. Garrus knew he did. He couldn't prove it, but he didn't have to; he could feel it in his bones. The knowledge insulted him, goaded him, left him impotent and outraged.

 

Knowing something did no good. Doing something was what counted. And—not for the first time—there was nothing he could do.

 

Nothing his superiors would let him do.

 

As much as he longed to see Saren confronted with the slightest suggestion his behavior was out of line, Garrus knew there was no reason to bother sticking around. No matter how persuasive these humans—and it did offer a certain satisfaction, the idea of Saren being forced to answer to humans—no matter how compelling their argument, nothing awaited but more disappointment.

 

The humans flickered in the corner of his eye as he stormed past; a vague jumble of black and white and a single, stark flash of red.

 

As it turned out, it was just as well his frustration had goaded him back to the office, because an anxious message from one of his contacts awaited him. Garrus kind of doubted her misgivings heralded anything serious, but stepping down to the Wards to reassure her would be—at worst—a distraction, and—at best—it might just provide him with a welcome—and much-needed—chance to shoot something.

 

As it was, his contact barely had time to hustle him into a shadowy alcove with a more-or-less incomprehensibly babbled explanation before the thugs arrived on the scene.

 

The first grabbed the contact by the upper arms, making her flinch. Garrus slid his sniper rifle from its slot in his armor and slowly, carefully, extended the barrel from the stock in painstaking silence and only by touch, never taking his eyes off the contact and the thugs. He eased the rifle up into position.

 

The contact jostled frustratingly into and out of his rifle sight. If he pulled the trigger in time with one of those maddening asynchronous shifts, the results could be disastrous. But...if he didn't pull it at all, it was only a matter of time before the thugs injured the witness themselves...or before she cracked and screamed for Garrus, in which case things would really go to hell fast—

 

Something, some hint of movement, some faint click or hiss on a register audible to him, but apparently indistinguishable to humans—at least over the sound of their own raised voices—told Garrus the door to the clinic had opened a split second before the squad burst into the room. For a single, tense breath, he thought the thugs had back-up, but recognition formed as shapes as colors slid across his scope. Black armor and a flash—a stark pulse—of red.

 

And—of all things—a rather bored-looking krogan. Garrus was sure there was a story behind that, and he was pretty sure he'd be seeing enough of this group to hear it.

 

Even as the thought crossed his mind in a mixture of amusement and amazement, he saw the image still in his scope; saw that one split second of perfect opportunity and instinctively pulled his fingers toward his palm as if to seize the chance before him...He pulled the trigger. The thug dropped like a sack of meat.

 

Garrus stepped from under cover...

 

Rather to his surprise, the least-apparently-intimidating member of the squad—a human female whose head barely cleared his shoulder—was already looking at him. She didn't glance at the body on the floor, or even in the direction of the still-shaking doctor. She looked Garrus in the eye and said, directly-almost analytically-without the faintest hint of disbelief or jealousy, merely stating fact, "Good shot."

 

It was hard to tell—he'd never heard such a tone from a human—but the words were almost too dry, a little too firm, as if pointing out that flawless execution didn't quite justify the questionable necessity of endangering the contact...and, yet, Garrus could also have sworn a corner of the human's mouth had quirked upward...an expression he might have interpreted as amused—or even admiring. He'd thought he'd begun to read humans rather well...but this one made him wonder...

 

This time he looked at her, really looked, sizing her up. She waited, lounging back on the balls of her feet, totally at ease and not-at-all at rest, ready to spring into action at a second's notice. She studied him as he assessed her and made no secret of it any more than he did.

 

Garrus felt his mandibles flair into a faint smirk.

 

She grinned back at him in that odd, flat, broad human fashion.

 

Somehow, as alien as she seemed, Garrus had the odd, unshakeable impression the two of them already understood each other very, very well.

 

 


	3. Representative

Shepard certainly knew how to get things done. There was no doubt in Garrus’ mind about that. And, unlike any commander--military or otherwise--he’d ever met, she knew good advice when she heard it.

 

She’d paused just long enough to ascertain the quarian hadn’t suffered any serious suit punctures, then nodded curtly, making a slight sweeping gesture with her submachine gun as she holstered it.

 

* * *

 

 

Less than twenty minutes later, Udina scanned the expanse of his office:

 

A quarian, a turian in C-Sec armor, and a krogan--who seemed disreputable even by the standards for his species commonly held in polite society-- stood in an awkward cluster between the door and the news feed console, their backs all carefully aligned with the wall. It would have seemed like the punchline of a bad joke, if only the scene had stopped there. Much to Udina’s undying mortification, it didn’t.

 

There was Anderson, calmly standing at what had to be nearly the exact center of the room, regarding him as smugly as a volus in the act of closing a brand-new multi-billion-credit contract.

 

And the marine Shepard’s team had managed to pull off Eden Prime--her name escaped him at the moment--one strand of dark hair pulling loose of her normally immaculate bun to fall across her sweat-smeared face, her pink-and-white armor spotted with blood, sitting off to the side, her booted feet crossed at the ankle...and propped up on his desk. She’d been eyeing the aliens almost resentfully, until Shepard informed Udina in no-uncertain-terms that they were there as her subordinates, at which point she’d begun to ignore them studiously instead.  

 

Alenko, the biotic, almost an afterthought in his unobjectionable dark armor, composed as a still-life on canvas, sitting beside her.

 

Shepard.

 

He’d known signing off on her inclusion as the Spectre candidate on board the Normandy had been a mistake.

 

Building up what little power and influence humanity had in the galactic community had been his life’s work, and in a few days, this one grimy grunt had managed to destroy at least two of the best negotiating tokens he’d held in all those years.

 

But it was too damned late to do anything about that now. He just had to institute some damage control before things got out of control.

 

“An audience with the Council is serious business, Shepard,” Udina snapped. “I don’t appreciate your attempts to turn it into a circus.”

 

Shepard shrugged. “Without us, you wouldn’t even have a reasonable request for an audience, so you wouldn’t be unreasonable enough to request an audience without us, I’m sure.”  She leaned back on the balls of her feet, crossed her arms over her chest, and looked the Ambassador directly in the eye.

 

He looked as if he had bitten into something extremely sour and was looking to spit it out without drawing too much attention to himself.  “Well, you should be represented, certainly, I never meant to imply--”

 

“We wouldn’t have any evidence to present at all without Garrus, Wrex, and Tali,” Shepard repeated firmly, without the faintest hint of persuasion. “As individuals, they have already contributed significant support to our investigation...and their representation of their species may be absolutely invaluable.”

 

Udina’s eyebrows went up.  He shot a distinctly skeptical look at the disreputable-looking trio.

 

“What better way to convince the Council of humanity’s readiness to take a more central role in leading our fellow races than by demonstrating--visually, no less--that we’re already working together in full cooperation?” Shepard asked coolly.

 

Udina flinched as if she’d waved a fist in his face and threatened to slug him.

 

Anderson smirked.

 

Kaidan caught Anderson’s eye and hastily looked away before the grin had time to spread to the surface. When was the last time he’d been this tempted to laugh--on duty or off? He couldn’t seem to remember. The air of ...well... not humor exactly, but... unexpectedness, maybe... that seemed to shimmer around Shepard warmed his blood in an unsettling-but not-necessarily-unwelcome-- though he supposed it should be, really-- sort of way.

 

“No presentation without representation,” Shepard murmured archly. Was it Kaidan’s imagination or had she cast a look toward him and Anderson beneath her lashes? As if to say she knew what they were thinking, and she enjoyed the joke as much as they did. But... whether she had or not, there was not a hint of amusement in her tone as she continued, “Either we all go, or none of us do.”  

 

_Including you._ The unspoken corollary was clear as crystal, ringing through the room.  If Udina wouldn’t give her what she wanted, she wasn’t about to give him the evidence. Even if it meant the Council continued doubting her version of the events that had led to the death of their Spectre.

 

The woman had a spine that rivaled the interior support beams of the god-damned Citadel. It was enough to make a man’s temperature spike, it really was. His temperature or his blood pressure.

 

Udina paused, narrowing his eyes at Shepard.   

 

Shepard stood and tossed a look into the corner. “Ready?”  

 

Kaidan swallowed hard and hoped nobody noticed. Williams raised her eyebrows at him and smirked. He resisted the urge to squirm.

  
“Willing and eager,”  the turian C-Sec officer chimed in, apparently without subtext, although Kaidan could almost see him resisting the urge to rub his hands together. It was just as well...if there had been subtext, well... Udina’s head might have exploded. _Or I might have experienced a sudden, unfortunate discharge of biotic energy that pounded the insubordination right out of the little maverick_ , Kaidan thought, appalled by the intense surge of satisfaction that accompanied the mental image. But not quite appalled enough to stifle the almost simultaneous reflection-- _Williams would help me do it, too, I know she would._


	4. The Hand Dealt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard attempts to make sense of all the changes in her life since she took up her post as XO on the Normandy. Garrus thinks some celebration is in order. Everyone else is just along for the ride.

Spectre.

 

She hadn’t really meant for that to happen. At least...she didn’t think she had.

 

She’d asked for it...and she’d sounded so sure, so certain in the process.

 

Shepard turned away from the dias, feeling almost dizzy, faintly nauseous, caught up in delirium.

 

The last time she’d really felt like herself had been Eden Prime...just before she’d looked over her shoulder and seen her handsome First Lieutenant stumble toward the tall spire of the Prothean Beacon she’d been sent to retrieve... a beacon that had begun to glow rather ominously...

 

She remembered leaping forward before she’d really had time to stop and think, knocking the LT off his feet and out of harm’s way...

 

She remembered a lot of stuff after that, too, but none of it felt quite...

 

right.

 

Depending on what had happened to her after the beacon had caught her up in a sudden, terrifying rush of energy like the screaming, pounding surf of a tidal wave...well...

 

she might be tossing about in med-bay, imagining all of this.

 

She rather hoped she was, really, when all was said and done.

 

Still, surreal as the last few days had seemed, something told her they were real.

 

Some parts were easier to believe than others.

 

The lieutenant, looking at her with warmth smoldering in the depths of his grave whiskey-colored eyes, for example...if anything, he seemed a little too good to be true.

 

The tall, tawny, towering woman on his right, well, she might just be the most believable thing in the room. The most relatable, without a doubt. She, like Shepard, was a fighter, a survivor, a skeptic.

 

The krogan and the quarian flanking her, on the other hand...well, they were equally unlikely. They looked as if they knew it, too. The krogan seemed to be deeply amused by the whole situation. The quarian just looked damned confused. Shepard knew how she felt.

 

“Feeling lucky, Shepard?” the turian on the lieutenant’s left flared his mandibles. Now he was vivid. Solid. Absolute.  She wished she knew what it was about him that seemed so...

 

It might have been an optical illusion, but she thought she saw Williams’ hand twitch in the corner of her vision.  She subtly extended two fingers of her own hand, angling them out from her hip and dropping them sharply. Stand down.

 

“I don’t know that luck has to do with it,” Shepard said wryly. “Most days I think I’d have no luck at all--”   _if it weren’t for bad luck_.

 

Lieutenant Alenko frowned slightly, his puzzled brown eyes meeting her grey ones over the brilliant,  blue-armored expanse of the turian’s broad shoulder.  Shepard shifted slightly, not quite a shake of her head, not quite a shrug.

 

Most people might have thought surviving the slaughter of an entire unit, the opportunity to see a Prothean Beacon firsthand, running into--not one but three!--people who happened to possess leads on the very information she needed to catch a criminal, and becoming the first human ever to be named a Spectre, was good luck. Almost too good to be true, if anything.

 

Of course, those people had never had to live through--or up to...or _with_ \--any of those experiences.

 

She wondered sometimes, what it was she had been expecting when she signed on with the Alliance military, planting her booted foot firmly in her parents’ footprints.  Whatever it had been, she was pretty sure she hadn’t expected this.

 

“Why? You wanna make my day, Vakarian?”

 

“We should visit Flux.” Garrus said with surprising enthusiasm, missing or ignoring the stifled snickers of the three humans.

 

“Flux?”  Williams repeated, sounding wary. “Sounds familiar...”

 

“A club, right?” Alenko supplied thoughtfully. “The one that C-Sec officer mentioned?”

 

“You mean me?” the turian blinked, the plates on his forehead flaring and contracting.

 

“No, another one. Human.”  Williams said categorically, her face composed. Innocent.

 

“Seemed to be a fan of Shepard’s,” Alenko said. Did he sound a bit sullen, or was that Shepard’s imagination? His eyes flicked away from hers, down toward the platform...but, then, the low, rumbling laugh of a krogan quaking through it was a little...distracting.

 

“Tall,” Williams added. “Broad-shouldered. Blonde.”  She nodded to herself. “Cute.” She raised her eyebrows in Shepard’s direction. “I’m in. I may need to break out my tinfoil skirt for this one.”

 

“Sounds like the kind of place I generally try to avoid,” Alenko said. “Too many bright lights, too much noise....One giant headache. But this...” he tilted his head in Williams’ direction as the corners of his mouth quirked. “Sounds like a sight I’ve got see.”

 

Shepard definitely hadn’t expected this. Not any of it. She hadn’t asked for the hand she’d been dealt. But did that mean she wanted to trade it in for something different, easier in the end? That she wasn’t willing to play?  

 

Whatever happened, it ought to be interesting.

  
“Why not?” she said, laughing.  “It’s not like I had anything better planned.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With a nod in the general direction of Dirty Harry.


	5. Controlled Crashing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard may be the worst driver in the history of driving... but that doesn't mean she isn't in control of the situation.

"Where in the realm in the of all the restless spirits did you learn to drive?" Garrus demanded indignantly.

 

At least, he tried to be indignant.

 

He suspected he mostly managed to sound relieved. But traveling a few miles without jumps, jolts, flips, or bounces was more than worth the sacrifice of a little dignity.

 

"It's not so much driving as controlled crashing," Alenko observed, casting a sidelong glance in Shepard's direction. "Or an attempt to control a crash, at any rate," he elaborated with an odd, lilting note in his voice. It was a note Shepard's voice often carried, but that his own almost never did. "But even Shepard couldn't hit so much as a bump in this wide, flat, open plain."

 

"Nothing the size of a pebble in sight, and thank the spirits of the place for that," Garrus sighed, sagging back against his seat.

 

Shepard wrenched the Mako into a hairpin turn so tight even her own head snapped.

 

Kaidan and Garrus reached up to rub the backs of their respective necks almost in sync, as if the entire move was some elaborate battle maneuver they were practicing.

 

Garrus was surprised Shepard hadn't reached up to rub her neck as well. She had to want to--in fact, he thought he saw the muscles in her shoulder quiver slightly, as if she were willfully suppressing a movement she'd begun to make without thinking, but that could have just been an odd optical reaction to another jerk of the Mako that sent them careening off.

 

"Akuze," She said tightly.

 

"Ak-uh-what?" Garrus sputtered, fighting the urge to dig his talons into the gunnery control panel in some desperately inane attempt to keep himself upright. "My translator is making an escape attempt."

 

But even as he said it, he realized Alenko had somehow managed to go unnaturally still. Which in the wildly-bouncing Mako, was really quite an impressive accomplishment. Alenko was staring at Shepard, which was more-or-less standard operating procedure, but his expression did seem to be a bit...

 

"Talk later," Shepard grunted a bit tartly. Garrus had never imagined Shepard and his father might have anything in common, but that particular tone was one he'd always assumed his father had invented. "Shoot now," she added helpfully, twirling the Mako into another gizzard-twisting side-spin.

 

"Shoot?" Garrus repeated as the view outside the Mako whirled into chaos. "Shoot what exactly? The sky?"

 

"No." The word wasn't Shepard's, it was Alenko's, soft and somber. He'd stopped staring at

Shepard and started craning his neck about to look out the windows, as if he was trying to catch a glimpse of some particularly important landmark.

 

Shepard's driving was so bad, the very ground had begun to tremble. Garrus didn't blame it.

 

Shepard flung the Mako into reverse, slamming Garrus into the gunnery console.

 

"Sorry," she said, not sounding it in the least, and pulled hard to port. "But would you please just shoot!"

 

Garrus reacted to the commanding tone of her voice instinctively, slamming his hand down onto the controls without the slightest idea what he was doing.

 

A missile arced from the gun, solidly impacting... "What in the names of all the ancestors--"

 

Garrus pressed his hands into the panel, levering himself up for a better look. The guns tattooed rapidly in response, spraying bullets like the geysers in the Presidium fountain sprayed water.

 

"Thresher Maw," Alenko gasped.

 

"That's better," Shepard sang out, slamming her foot onto the accelerator in lieu of punctuation. " _Thank you!_ "

 

"Uh...Shepard," Garrus said, reluctant to refuse her praise, but figuring they'd all be better off if she knew the score, "I'm afraid I'm not actually aiming at anything. It's...uh...kind of hard to get a target lock--"

 

"That's the idea," Shepard agreed chirpily, spinning the Mako like a top.

 

And narrowly avoiding a splash of some very vile green liquid the worm-like thing erupting out of the smooth, quiet plain had spat at them.

 

"Kaidan-"

 

"Standing by to slap omni-gel on any leaks in the vessel, m'am," he said smoothly. His unruffled manner always made Garrus want to shake him up a bit just to see if anything came loose. Garrus suspected it annoyed Wrex equally, if not to an even greater degree, but, if so, the krogan routinely exerted an amount of control widely believed to be contrary to the nature of his species. "Seeing as how I'm temporarily relieved of navigational duties." In defiance of all things likely, that lilting tone seemed to be creeping back into the LT's voice.

  
Shepard's lips twitched and her head might have turned the merest fraction in Alenko's direction. She mumbled, as near as Garrus could tell over the bone-jarring vibrations of the Thresher Maw's pursuit, the more immediate rumble of the Mako's guns, and the crash of a haphazardly-aimed missile impacting... _something_ , "that's my...uh.. 'atta boy."


	6. A Few Bumps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus gets a quick recap of the reputation that made Shepard the first human Spectre. Kaidan provides moral support.

The next fifteen or twenty minutes seemed like fifteen or twenty years.

By the time the huge, hairy, worm-like Thresher Maw gave a final bellowing roar and collapsed, flailing and flopping across the ground like a water hose unexpectedly disconnected from the output valve, Shepard and Alenko both had beads of moisture collecting across their foreheads.

It was a mystery to Garrus where all that moisture could even come from. He felt as hot and dry as a desert, the plates on his forehead expanding and contracting in a vain attempt to vent his adrenaline-amped body temperature as he drew breath in exhausted, warbling bursts.

Shepard and Alenko were panting, too, a low, harsh sound that grated on Garrus' nerves.

Shepard looked around, her normally pink-tinted face pale. "Everybody in one piece?"

Garrus bobbed his head in affirmation, noting--vaguely, but not for the first time--how odd and convenient it was that humans used a similar gesture in the same manner...sometimes, particularly lately, he found himself musing over the bitter irony that two cultures who met for the first time in brief-but-furious battle due to miscommunication should have so many similar gestures for the purpose of communication.

"Thanks to you, Commander," Alenko said soberly, still sounding winded.

"Commander," Garrus said inquisitively, the question emerging with the slow, deliberate shape of the word, "how did you know?"

Shepard sighed, reaching up to rub her shoulder, rolling it as if it ached. There was something...distant...about the motions, as if she did them by habit, rather than because she had managed to wrench her shoulder against the safety harness in the course of the Mako's wild gyrations. "Akuze," she repeated.

None of the other humans Garrus had worked with had ever used this word to answer questions, rhetorical or otherwise. He tilted his head almost imperceptibly, his lips barely parted to ask--

"It's an answer, Garrus," she said, "but...only because it answers your questions."

Alenko made a sputtering sound that might have been laughter, or might only have been the liquid from his canteen going down wrong.

"Commander?" Garrus could feel his mandibles twitch with a reaction somewhere in between confusion and consternation. Was he missing something obvious? Was Alenko making fun of him? Was Shepard? They both seemed like intelligent officers. Why would they undermine team morale that way? He'd worked with humans before, not often, and not over long periods of time, but enough so that he'd thought he was reasonably competent at understanding them...though, he suddenly remembered he'd felt unsure of that the moment Shepard had stared him down in Dr. Michel's clinic.

Shepard, watching him, shook her head. "I mean it's not a word most humans use to answer questions," she explained. "It's the name of a planet. Actually, I sort of expected you to recognize it."

"There are a lot of planets in the galaxy, Commander," Garrus said mildly, pleased to note that his voice was smooth and steady in spite of the jolt of sheepish shame that sparked through him. Of course, it was the reaction any self-respecting turian would expect to have at the thought of disappointing his commander's expectations. But Garrus had long thought he was no good at meeting expectations...especially when it came to his reactions. Weird, how a handful of days among a few dozen humans could make him feel more fundamentally turian than all his years in the service, or all his father's nagging.

He wasn't sure, yet, though, whether the idea worried or amused or pleased him... "I stopped trying to keep track of them all quite a while back. The only planets I know anything about are the ones involved in whatever it is I happen to be investigating."

Shepard paused to take the canteen Alenko held out in invitation, touched the Lieutenant's now-empty hand, briefly, with the very tips of her fingers, a gesture Garrus assumed--given the context of the situation--to be of gratitude, took a violent swig at the canteen, handed it back to its owner, and wiped the back of her forearm across her mouth.

"A sensible attitude," she reflected. "Akuze is one planet I wish I knew nothing about."

"I can see why," Garrus said ruefully, "it you encountered one of those monstrosities."

Alenko made that odd, choking-laugh sound again. "Not one, Garrus. Several."

"What? At once? How did--" Garrus broke off suddenly, horribly aware of the words he hadn't spoken, not quite, echoing in his ears. From the looks of what he took to be discomfort on their faces, Shepard and Alenko could hear them, too.

"Barely. Just barely," Shepard said grimly, rolling her shoulder again, so violently it was apt to do more harm than good.

"It was--" Alenko broke off and looked at Shepard. Shepard nodded, rubbing at her shoulder.

Alenko watched her for a minute, his dark eyes inscrutable, then turned his attention more fully to Garrus. "There was--is--a human colony on Akuze. One of the settlements on the outskirts of the colony proper had gone completely silent, and people were worried, thinking it might be a batarian raid. Shepard's unit was sent in to investigate."

"The settlement was a mess," Shepard said, rolling her shoulder again. "Looked like an earthquake had hit it... walls half-gone, stuff strewn everywhere. But there were no bodies. We decided--well, I guess I decided...I was in charge. It was--it was my fault." She shook herself slightly, like a turian trying to ease some muscles after a particularly strenuous sparring bout. "I decided we should sift through the rubble, try to find some sort of indication as to where the settlers had gone. We were at it most of the day... the team was tired, but I was determined not to request pick-up, not until I had some sort of answers, something to offer our superiors."

Alenko reached out and put his hand on her shoulder, perhaps to offer comfort, perhaps just to keep her from developing a repetitive stress injury. She turned toward him, looked at him without any indication of seeing anything.

"We were setting up camp when the ground started to shake."

"On foot?" Garrus interjected, horrified, then subsided under Alenko's positively thunderous look.

"On foot," Shepard confirmed. "I was still thinking of earthquakes, though I don't really know why. My first thought was to get away from the buildings, so we wouldn't be buried inside if they collapsed. I told the men to head for higher ground. We were scrambling up this steep, rocky incline when the first Thresher erupted out of the ground behind us. We were all still gaping at it like it was a some sort of visitation from the divine when the damn thing spit. The acid ate the face off the guy beside me. Literally. He didn't have time to scream. I suppose that was a small blessing... for me, I mean, not for him. If he'd screamed, I'd never stop hearing him--"

Using the hand cupping her far shoulder, Alenko pulled her closer to him, as if offering her the shelter of his larger frame. She seemed to resist for a moment, then relaxed into the momentum he'd created, allowing herself to lean against him. She rested in the lee of his body, looking tired and drained.

"That's how I got this, " she added, reaching up to touch the break in the center of one of the arches over her eyes. "I think. The doctors thought for months I might lose my eye. But I beat the odds. I'm good at that, I guess."

"Commander," Alenko said, his voice surprisingly gentle.

Shepard shook her head. "No, Kaidan. It's okay. I'm okay." Still leaning on Alenko's shoulder, she continued, " Even though we made more obvious targets, the three of us on the hill-face had better luck than the three behind us. More Threshers erupted up and out, biting men in half, swallowing them whole. Wrapping them in their coils. I can't really tell you what happened--it's just a confusion of images, all blurred with a kind of red haze--from the blood in my eyes, I suppose?

"Anyway, we ran, taking cover behind anything we could. We learned the hard way that even walls don't stop that spit...one of the guys was hit in the gut. We didn't have enough medigel, but even if we had, it wouldn't have done any good, not without some way to get that acid off of him. He died while we were trying to stabilize him enough so we could move him. In retrospect, stopping at all was kind of foolhardy, under the circumstances, with those things on our heels, but I'd do it again. I hope the other guy--his name was Toombs--would too, but I'd have to ask him and, of course, I can't."

She lapsed into silence.

Garrus stared at Alenko. Alenko stared back. Shepard stared into space without noticing.

"With the wall gone, we could see that the structure was some sort of mining garage. And there was an armored car, equipped with a mining laser and some blasting caps. We didn't have a wounded man to move, but we figured we had as good a chance in that car as on foot, so we got in anyway. It was Toombs who realized... the whole time we'd been running, those damn worms never came up under rock... and the rocks we'd hidden behind hadn't melted the way those walls did.

"We circled back around...to look for survivors, to get some payback, six of one, half a dozen of the other. We didn't see any trace of the men we'd left behind--the acid is probably to thank for that--but we managed to kill three or four of those worms, before we hit the jolt--I lost control of the car--" she laughed, possibly at the expression, "The way I drive may be like crashing, but it is definitely under control. Except that it wasn't. Not for that split second. And that was enough. I wrenched the wheel back around. The front tires were back on the rock. And that frigging worm came up underneath us, under the back tires. Took the gunnery station right out of the back, caught up in that damned fringe around its head. Don't know if it meant to or not."

Garrus, who had been beginning to feel more comfortable, suddenly felt as though he might spontaneously combust. He looked around his station and patted the seat under him with a nervous talon, grateful Alenko seemed to be watching Shepard, grateful Shepard didn't seem to notice. She was still talking, almost to herself, as if narrating a nightmare.

"I dropped out of the harness, crawled through a window and got the ridge between us. I just watched that damn thing, trying to figure out what to do, how to get the car seat away from it...  
"I wasn't even sure whether or not it was worth it. If there was any residual acid in that fringe, well... Toombs was already dead. I probably would have died, standing there debating over a dead man, only the remaining ordinance in the car decided to explode. Went off close enough to the Maw to give it a good scare, and whoosh, the whole damn thing is rushing past me like a freight train to nowhere. It went underground, taking that seat and whatever was left of Toombs with it."

And whenever she was on a planet, whenever she was near flat ground, she kept waiting on it to return and finish the job. But...she kept going groundside, anyway, and when a Thresher did appear, she'd kept her cool and saved herself and her team into the bargain. Garrus couldn't quite believe it, and he was willing to bet Alenko couldn't either.

There was a long and profound silence.

It seemed as long--or longer--than the attack itself had.

"Well," Shepard said, pulling herself upright. "The way I drive may take some getting used to, but-mark my words--you'll learn to love it. It keeps things interesting. What's life without a few bumps?"


	7. The Problem of the Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard's past reappears in an unexpected spot. She and Garrus discuss vigilante justice.

Shepard had lost track of how long she'd been sitting on the rough, rocky ridge, staring into the skies of Ontarom. She longed to feel humbled by beauty, by power...by sheer open space.

 

Staring into those fathomless blue depths surging and crackling with tempestuous amber sparks, she felt she ought to find her problems dwarfed and dazzled into insignificance. Just like the silvery exhaust trails of the Alliance pick-up shuttle she knew were there but couldn't see.

 

But, if anything, her problems simply felt bigger, closer, more overwhelming than ever. Like an inexorable tide, pulling her back into the maelstrom of the past.

 

The soft, skittering sound of a pebble bouncing down the rock face brought her head whipping around, her hand automatically reaching for her pistol. Garrus froze in mid-step, talons extended slightly out and away from his body in a conciliatory gesture, and rolled his shoulders, looking sheepish. Shepard's motion stopped and faded away before it had even fully emerged into existence. She turned and looked back at the sky, allowing him to regain some measure of dignity as he stepped up beside her.

 

Garrus was eyeing her the way a gunnery sergeant eyed a raw recruit about to make a terrible mistake.

 

Shepard sighed and reached up to rub her temples, her fingers dipping down as if to confirm the thin, smooth line bisecting her eyebrow still remained.

 

"I get the distinct impression you have something you want to ask me."

 

"Well, uh, yeah..." Garrus paused, staring past her, possibly looking for the same marks of passage she'd tried and failed to detect. "That...uh...doctor...he's no better than Saleon, and you let me shoot _him_."

 

"That's not exactly a question," she observed wryly, feeling the corners of her mouth quirk. "But you're right. On both counts. He's not. And I did."

 

Garrus huffed softly, a sound of frustration or amusement. Probably both. They brought that out in each other.

 

"As personal as that situation felt, what Saleon did wasn't as personal as what that guy--" Garrus waved an expansive talon in the direction of the horizon, "did to...your...friend. To you."

 

She grunted vaguely. More or less in agreement, which Garrus seemed to catch, though he may or may not also have noticed her reluctance to think about the subject. Let alone discuss it.

 

Garrus folded himself stiffly down onto the rock beside her. "So why not let--"

 

"Toombs" she supplied absently. Helpfully, but absently.

 

"Toombs." Garrus repeated as if making a note of the name for future reference. The plates on his forehead flared slightly. "Huh. Tombs. Isn't that what you humans call those holes in the ground where you cache the spirits of your dead?"

 

"The spelling is different," she said, more to ward off the sudden chill ghosting along her skin than to educate her companion in the arcana of the human language. "But, yeah, that is kinda the meaning of a word that sounds exactly the same." _And he is the repository of something--maybe everything--that's haunted me for years, if that's what you're asking._

 

"Uh," Garrus said eloquently. And shook himself. "Right. So...uh...why not let...this guy who sounds like the spirits of your dead...rid the galaxy of one more twisted criminal? That guy deserved punishment just as much as Saleon."

 

"Is that what you think?" she asked, surprised. "Was that what taking Saleon out was about, Garrus? Punishment?"

 

"Isn't that what it was about, Commander? He committed a crime--crimes--and we made sure he _paid the price_."

 

"Well," she said, and stopped, at a loss. She shook her head and laughed just a bit, ruefully. "Yes."

 

"Well," Garrus repeated, sounding smug. But something more. He sounded relieved; she thought she understood. Punishment was simple, something concrete, something he had to question only when it was missing, undeserved, or incomplete. She understood all too well. "Then?"

 

"You-- _we_ \--made sure Saleon paid for what he had done, because we _could_ , Garrus. We-- _you_ \--knew what he had done."

 

"That's my point!" Garrus said impatiently. "You--and this, this...Toombs--knew what that guy," he waved at the horizon again, more violently than before, "had done, too!"

 

Shepard laughed again. Shortly. The sound hurt her ears. It hurt her heart. "Toombs may have known what Dr. Wayne had done, Garrus, but he also knew he didn't do those things alone--"

 

"What difference does that make? He still did them!"

 

"And if he died, he couldn't do them anymore," she agreed wearily. _Oh, how I wish all wars were so easy to win. Or even most wars. I'd settle for most wars. I would._ She sighed. "But, Garrus, all those other people he was working with--they could." _And they would. And they most likely will._

 

"So...you're saying...you spared one criminal now...so you--well, someone...probably not you, actually--could stop other criminals later?"

 

Strange, how hearing that one hesitant question somehow left her feeling more awed and amazed than all the wonders of this world.

 

"Isn't that the point?" she asked softly. "Isn't that why Saleon haunted you? Not because of what he had done to all the victims you knew about, but because of what he could do to all those victims you would never know about? Isn't _that_ what killing him was about, Garrus?"

 

"Well," he said slowly, considering. Then, sounding surprised, "yes?"

 

"Well, then," she said, and smiled.

 

And Garrus smiled back.

 

For a few moments, they looked out at the sky together.

 

 


	8. Borrowed Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus provides a listening ear as Shepard tries to come to terms with what happened on Virmire.

Garrus was checking the Mako for damage from the hot-and-fast ride into the STG base camp when he heard the elevator.

 

Confused, he turned to see Shepard stepping through the doors, almost more quickly than they could whisper open. She strode past, so focused on her destination he doubted she'd even seen him or even realized she wasn't alone in the hold.

 

Strode up to the armory station, the station Williams had occupied every day-shift since Garrus had joined the squad.

 

He watched, all-but-seeing Williams standing there eyeing Shepard with a wry smirk, as Shepard fiddled with several tools on the workstation.

 

Shepard paused, her hand hovering over the computer interface Garrus had seen playing messages from Williams’ family, and sighed heavily, her shoulders beginning to slump. Her hand dropped, clutching something on the table so tightly Garrus thought he could see the strain in her bare knuckles.

 

"Garrus." Shepard spoke without turning around, her voice weary. "Care to join me for a drink?”

 

Garrus had no idea what to say.

 

So he moved without speaking, a few long strides bringing him to her side.

 

Shepard stayed as she was, clutching the bottle.

 

Garrus waited silently, until the silence began to take on a weight he could feel pressing down into his shoulders.

 

Slowly, wondering if he was stepping out of line, he reached over and gently tugged the bottle from her grasp.

 

Shepard made a faint sound. Protest? Grief? Gratitude? All of the above? None of them?

 

Garrus just didn't know.

 

Shepard didn't move, so he looked around for glasses, mostly so he wasn't looking at her instead. Locating them behind the a box of various components, he relocated them to the front of the table with a faint clink that made Shepard wince, and splashed liquid into them.

 

She'd picked up her glass before he'd set the bottle down, so Garrus picked up his glass, too, still watching, still uncertain.

 

Shepard raised her glass in a gesture Garrus had begun to recognize after a few group outings to Flux. She was proposing a toast.

 

He raised his glass too. "To...Ashley?" He suggested, hesitant, trying to scope the situation that had already enmeshed him.

 

Shepard's eyes sparked. "To borrowed time," she said softly, and clinked the rim of her glass to the rim of his.

 

She kicked the drink back in one smooth shot. Garrus met the motion and matched it. The glasses thunked back onto the solid surface of the workstation.

 

Shepard rolled her shoulder, rubbed the back of her neck. Waved a hand at the bottle.

 

Garrus splayed his arms slightly, arched his spine in a subtle turian shrug, and poured.

 

Shepard picked up the glass, swirled the contents, set it down with a sigh. "So, Vakarian, have I ever told you where I picked up my dead-eye?"

 

It was in N7 training that she'd really learned to snipe.

 

She'd taken to the sniper rifle like a duck to water, with all the wonder and relief of a captive-but-wild animal returning to its natural environment. The rifle was heavy, it was awkward, it was slow... but it was powerful, and it both granted and required absolutely iron control. Power and control... two things she'd felt absolutely bereft of from the moment she set foot on Akuze. Two things she'd thought by the end she'd never reclaim again. Important things. Things she never took for granted now, but greeted each time she looked through her scope with a sense of immeasurable relief. A gratitude for survival, for choice. The ability not to be a helpless victim, but to act. To protect oneself, and even others. To survive.

 

Shepard was damn good at it. She took pride in it.

 

All soldiers had some basic training with a sniper rifle. It was part of their core training. But most of them never progressed past the most general competency, the barest understanding of the weapon. Most of them preferred quick-and-ugly. And why shouldn't they? It was how they were trained to think, what they were trained to be.

 

Sometimes, even before Akuze, Shepard desperately wished she could give in to that training, let it wash over her. She didn't want to think.

 

After Akuze, well...

Then she _really_ didn't want to think.

 

She'd grown up in space. She was used to feeling small, insignificant. Or so she'd believed. It was Akuze that had shown her just how mistaken she she was.

 

After Akuze, she felt powerless.

 

She'd been bound to learn her limitations sometime, though she wished her unit hadn't been the price she'd paid for the lesson.

 

But their lives made it valuable.

 

She knew it was an accident, an odd quirk of fate, that she had walked away. Not unscathed, not unmarked, but alive. Barely.

 

Anderson had been the one to pull her off that rock, and he claimed it wasn't luck. At least, not exclusively. It was adaptability. And perseverance. And...well...

 

Whatever it was, they were agreed on one thing. It set her apart from her fellows. She wasn't just rank-and-file. Not anymore. Not after that.

 

She never knew for sure if she'd gotten into elite training on her own merits, or if Anderson had pulled some strings.

 

But she did know that the challenge of earning her stripes saved her sanity just as surely as Anderson's timely arrival had saved her skin.

 

She never forgot it.

 

He probably knew it, too, but he never gave any indication.

 

She never forgot that, either.

 

Borrowed time. In a way, Ash had been living on it since Eden Prime...and Shepard had been living on it since Akuze.

 

After Akuze, she'd promised herself--never again. Never again.

 

For while, she thought she'd succeeded.

  
And then she and her team had gone groundside on Virmire.


	9. Shepard's First Rule

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard and Garrus discuss his plans for the future following the Battle of Citadel.

"So...about this Spectre training of yours..."

 

"Shepard..." Garrus tensed, his gizzard lurching. "Are you trying to tell me this is a bad idea?"

 

Shepard shook her head violently, making her shaggy auburn hair sway and brush across her hardsuit collar. "No! Absolutely not. I think it's brilliant, actually. You'll make a damn fine Spectre—one of the best—and I _will_ tell the Council as much—whether you like it or not."

 

Garrus chuckled, mostly nervous, but partly amused. "You can't seriously think I'd object to anything you said? I never fail to enjoy the things you can do with your tongue— "

 

"It's just...I thought...I mean...I guess I mean...I hoped..." she sputtered the words, more agitated and uncomfortable than he had ever seen her, but, somehow, smiling. "Oh, damn it all to hell! Do you really want to leave the Normandy?"

 

"What? Of course not! Why would you even think—oh! Shit. _Shit_!" Garrus shifted on his feet, "I didn't realize..."

 

There was a long pause.

 

"I...uh...if that's what it takes, then...well..." He raised his head, unconsciously mimicking a gesture he'd seen her make time and time again.

 

_Whatever it takes, no matter the cost, no matter the consequence._ Their eyes met, the unspoken words hanging between them. They'd always understood one another. They were two of kind. Spectres.

 

Another, longer pause.

 

Shepard stopped, sighed, took a deep breath. Raised her chin and squared her shoulders as if preparing to make an important presentation to the Council. One she didn't expect to go particularly well...but maybe that went without saying, knowing the Council.

 

"Garrus, you didn't sign on to go chasing geth into all corners of the galaxy on the off-chance they might slip up and lead us to the Reaper Hive. You signed on to stop Saren—and you did. We did. That was enough—more than enough. I can't ask you to do it twice."

 

Garrus smirked. "Oh, really? Then why are we having this conversation, exactly?"

 

"Look, the thing is..." Shepard rubbed the back of her neck. "Spectres are known for working alone...but—you might have noticed—I prefer to be be part of a team..."

 

Their eyes met again, the look strong and solid. Unshakeable.

 

"If I could pick anyone in the galaxy to fly into the face of death on my wing it would be you, Garrus."

 

"Is that so, Commander? I thought you and Alenko..."

 

She blushed darkly. "Thought, my ass, Vakarian. You knew. We did—we _are_. Kaidan's...special. But I said anyone, and I meant _anyone_."

 

"Shepard...I'm...honored. Are you asking me to rejoin you after I'm instated? I hadn't realized that was an option."

 

"More than an option. A petition," she said without hesitation.

 

"Then just try and stop me," Garrus said with immediate, equal conviction.

 

"Garrus," she said earnestly, laying her gloved hand on his armored forearm, "if you want to go to training, don't let me stop you. Hell, I'll help you pack, but...if it wasn't necessary—training, I mean—would you..."

 

"Shepard..." He only realized what a large part of him had been tense—ever since Shepard had asked him what he saw himself doing after Saren was brought to justice—when it unwound, making his gizzard twitch and his heart do flips. "...are you saying..."

 

Garrus had assumed the question had implied a change Shepard thought inevitable, maybe even necessary...and he'd been willing to accept that, even if it was a change he didn't particularly want. But, if he'd known...if he'd realized... "...are you asking me to stay?"

 

She dropped her hand and stepped back as if reminding herself to keep her distance. Her cool voice cut his agitation short, quick and clean. "Not if it means forfeiting your chance at being a Spectre." Again.

 

"I think that's really my call to make, isn't it, Commander?" He tilted his head back and to the side.

 

"Maybe" Shepard shrugged. "But I wouldn't be able to live with the guilt...and sooner or later, you might start to resent me. I really couldn't live with that." Her voice was sober, as serious as he'd ever it heard it, and she wasn't serious often. She'd made her decision, and it wasn't up for discussion.

 

Garrus felt a sudden, hot surge of frustration. Normally, he'd have been delighted by the compliment, but now all he could hear was her refusal to let him assess the situation and decide his own course of action. Her rejection.

 

"Then why question my departure—why make me question it?" he snapped. "I know you're the brilliant tactician who defeated Saren—and the geth, no less--but...you're not really making a whole lot of sense here."

 

She grinned wryly. "Shepard's First Rule: There's almost always more than one way to accomplish an objective. The trick is to pick the right approach. Remember how we met?"

 

Garrus bit down on the urge to ask her what objective she could possibly accomplish by tying his gizzard into knots and nodded.

 

"Why did I go to Dr. Michel's clinic? Why did you?" Shepard prompted, eyeing him like a teacher hoping her student is about to make a brilliant breakthrough.

 

Garrus hated to disappoint, but the answer to that question was far too limited to leave room for discovery. Garrus snorted. "Searching for dirt on Saren."

 

"Why?"

 

"He'd gone rogue and killed another Spectre...during what was supposed to be the Normandy's shakedown cruise on Eden Prime." Garrus had always prided himself on remembering the little details. They were so often of use, even if you couldn't predict exactly how or when that might be.

 

"And why was Nihlus—the other Spectre—on our shakedown cruise?"

 

"Because the mission was supposed to be one of several," Garrus' eyes widened, the plates on his forehead flaring slightly. "Assessing your suitability to become a Spectre."

 

Shepard grinned and clapped her hands together in satisfaction. "Remember what Anderson told us about his history with Saren?"

 

Garrus still didn't see exactly where this was going, but she'd never given him any reason to regret following her lead, and answering a few questions was quite a bit easier than most of things he ended up doing in her service. "His mission with Saren was supposed to—" _assess his suitability to become a Spectre_. The realization quaked through him like the tread of an approaching Colossus.

 

Shepard nodded vigorously. "Exactly."

 

"Well, I'll be damned." Garrus folded his arms across his chest, leaning back on his heels to regard her in bemused approbation. "Do you think the Council will agree?"

 

"If Saren, the geth, and Sovereign couldn't stand in our way, I doubt the Council could...not that I think they'd try. Right now, I imagine they'll agree to pretty much anything that might convince me and my big, inconvenient story to get our dirty hands off their false sense of security and disappear back into the Terminus systems like good little drones."

 

The corners of her mouth quirked, her semi-habitual wry grin struggling to reappear. "Plus, you know, I have a way with words..."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With a nod in the direction of Wizard's First Rule.


	10. Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The destruction of Normandy and the loss of one of their own.

Joker was drawn back into the farthest corner of the pod, hunched and huddled in on himself, a wounded animal protecting a vulnerable and painful spot. His eyes were wide and wild. The shape of his mouth mirrored his posture, drawing in, tightening up, a rounded gap of pain.

 

Kaidan felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. He'd seen rachni, thorian creepers, and husks.

He'd seen them blown into bits by grenades, seen their heads fountain up in the explosive aftermath of a well-timed sniper shot, seen them gutted by the blade extension on Wrex's shotgun... and he'd never felt this close to throwing up. His head throbbed in painful, broken thumps, as if the shrapnel of his shattered heart had somehow lodged in his temples. And, he suddenly realized, his knees had dissolved. He was standing upright by the grace of Garrus.

 

Garrus himself stood straight and sharp and stiff as a dragon's tooth, mandibles, forehead plates, arms, legs, knees, shoulders, elbows, everything pulled in absolutely tight and compact, as if his carapace had shrunk and didn't fit.

 

"Check the other pods," someone said.

 

"Kaidan... All the pods have already been accounted for, you know that," Liara's voice, cool and infinite and sad.

 

That was when he realized the voice he'd heard was his own. Realized it, but didn't believe it. Just as he didn't believe she was dead.

 

"No."

 

Joker stared, but not because he appeared to have registered anything but whatever it was that had put that look on his face.

 

Garrus and Liara stared.

 

No doubt if Tali and Wrex had been there they'd have stared.

 

"No," Kaidan said again, and this time the word was steadier, less harsh and desperate.

 

"Shepard survived Akuze. She survived the Blitz. She survived having a reaper drop down on her head... we thought she was a goner then, didn't we, Garrus?"

 

The turian tilted his head slightly. Acknowledging the point, but sorrowfully, as if saluting a fallen comrade.

 

"Shepard is famous for surviving against any and all expectations," he insisted, though a distant part of him could hear an undercurrent to his voice that sounded... mournful. Pleading. "Why should now be any different?"

 

He felt the subtle shift in the stance of the turian beside him. Garrus, at least, wanted to believe. Well, that made sense. Garrus had been there, with him, in the rubble of the Citadel, stunned by a grief that had just begun to smart, when she'd come scrabbling into sight. Garrus knew... he knew... she wasn't gone. She was just delayed. Any second now...

 

"It is," Liara said. Her blue skin was pale in the cold, slanting light. It looked dry and gray, like hard-frozen soil. Or ash. "It just is." Her pupils were contracted so tightly they looked like pin-pricks in the too-blue irises of her eyes.

 

Kaidan wanted to question it, ask how she could make such a claim, but he didn't. He couldn't. The asari had linked her mind with Shepard's, not just once, not just twice, but three times, in order to help her make sense of the information forced on her by the Prothean beacon and the other asari commando. The bond those links had forged between them was so strong it was tangible, so much so that he'd begun to think... no, he was forced to admit that he might not know how Liara knew, but he knew she did.

 

And that hurt.

 

It hurt him that someone, anyone, could claim any knowledge or any part of Shepard that didn't also--primarily--belong to him.

 

All the more so if it was the last part.

 

"She's... she's right," Joker said, his voice thin and distant, cracking over the words. "Shepard... didn't... she isn't... she..."

 

"What is it, Joker?" Liara asked softly, gently, stepping into the pod and bending one knee to bring herself to his level, putting a hand on his shoulder, compelling. "What happened?"

 

Kaidan resisted the sudden urge to hit them both with a singularity, just to force the heart-wrenching image they presented to break apart. Garrus must have felt something, a tensing of muscles, or a tingle of gathering dark energy, because his hand tightened on Kaidan's elbow, just enough to be noticeable. Kaidan didn't move, but he didn't give a damn about what had happened either. He cared about one thing, and only one thing. "Where is she?"

 

"Shepard... convinced me to leave... practically carried me to the pod... she was standing... right... right..." the pilot choked on the words, making a short, sharp sound horribly akin to a sob.

 

Joker raised a shaking hand and pointed. He was pointing just beyond the hatchway of the pod, nearly exactly where Kaidan and Garrus now stood.

 

"The beam... it hit, broke the ship apart. I could see her falling away..."

 

"No." The word was so rough as to be nearly unrecognizable. Everyone pretended they hadn't heard it. It was almost as though he hadn't actually said it. "She wouldn't just fall," Kaidan said flatly. "She never gives in, not even to the inevitable."

 

Garrus made a sound that could conceivably have been a chuckle, if only it hadn't been so damn sad. "Especially not to the inevitable." Like Sovereign.

 

"She..." Joker's eyes fell away from them.

 

There was a long pause.

 

"Joker," Kaidan rasped.

 

"Caught herself," Joker finished. "There." He pointed to the framework of the hatch. "Dammit! I should have lunged for her! Pulled her in!" Joker exploded, so loudly Liara rocked backward in shock. Kaidan flinched, feeling the sound reverberate through his head.

 

"Yeah," Kaidan ground out, the word cutting through his tongue like ground glass, so deep and sharp it scored his soul. Liara shot him a warning look. He glared back at her, defiant.

 

"She... she... looked at me," Joker said more quietly. "Eye to eye, like she was trying to tell me something. Then..." He paused, licked lips as his throat worked. "She... let go..." he whispered.

 

Silence quaked through their little group.

 

"Not... entirely..." Joker added eventually. "Just.. one hand... she... used it to punch the seal-and-release interface..."

 

_Kaidan_ , her voice throbbed through his head, making lights flicker at the corner of his vision, _just go_.

 

"... the door closed... I hadn't even heard the seal... that beam... that damn beam... it fired... cut... right... right between us... and..."

 

"Did it hit her?" Liara's voice was finally starting to vibrate with some of the tension Kaidan had been feeling since Joker had refused his offer to help him to the pod. This pod. The one Shepard had been lost helping him into. He was grinding his teeth together, the sound grating through his temples, behind his eyes.

 

Joker was shaking his head from side-to-side, over and over again. His eyes were staring into space, as if he was seeing something none of the rest of them could. "No," he said softly. "No... she just... let go."

 

"She was spaced," Kaidan translated grimly, startled at the sound of his own voice, startled that he'd managed to process enough to say it aloud. But surprise was surpassed by hope. "The hardsuit would give her some protection... if she could avoid the atmosphere... we have to get someone looking for her--now. How much air is in those tanks? Dammit... they made me repeat that hundreds of times in basic..."

 

Garrus was looking around as if in search of a ship or a shuttle or a working radio, but Joker was hugging himself and Liara was shaking her head. "Kaidan... I'm sorry... so sorry, but... Shepard is lost... she's gone."

 

 


	11. Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaidan was just starting to get his equilibrium back after losing the love of his life. And then the rumors started.

Kaidan wished he could contact some of the old squad, ask them if they'd heard anything, if they thought the rumors could possibly be true, just to hear them say no. Because if the rumors were true... Shepard would have contacted him. First and foremost. He would know.

 

But what he knew...

was that the rumors just couldn't be true.

 

They couldn't be.

 

It was absolutely impossible.

 

Shepard had been spaced. Unequivocally.

 

Joker had watched it happen from less than four feet away. Kaidan had seen his face, seen his eyes, seen the odd, hunched, wounded way in which he'd huddled into himself all through the days after the crash, the days leading up to the stilted surreality of the memorial service... Joker wasn't lying.

 

Even if he'd been able to doubt that, Liara claimed to have felt it firsthand.

 

What stung, really stung, more than anything was that he'd been expecting this. For so long... so long... after she'd... died... he'd known she was alive, felt it with every fiber of his being. He'd looked for her behind every open door, stepping off every arriving ship, expected her words, her voice in every message ping that drifted in from the extranet... until... he didn't even know when he'd begun to accept her death... maybe he never really had... he'd just been forced to admit that-dead or not--

 

Liara was absolutely and exactly right. Shepard was gone. She was gone... and she wasn't coming back.

 

When the Alliance ships arrived before she did, he'd started to doubt.

 

The doubt began congealing into fear, creeping around his throat and squeezing like the cold, dead hand of a husk, when the Alliance troops had combed the planet and the Alliance ships had combed the atmosphere and nearby space as well as they could... without so much as a faint bleep on the LADAR.

 

The fear had started to solidify and take root in his stomach like a block of tentacled icy grief in the fortnight they'd spent at Arcturus and then at the Citadel, going over those last moments again and again... reliving the death of the _Normandy_... without Shepard ever busting in to set the record straight.

 

And at the end of the month, when Anderson began to speak to the squad about tentative arrangements for a memorial service, the tentacled block of ice still lodged in Kaidan's gut had seized his spine, pulling and constricting until ice crackled along his biotic jack, through his temples and down into his jaw.

 

That service... it was all a blank, black smoking hole of memory. Even at the time, he couldn't see, couldn't feel. He was just sitting there... stiff, unmoving... dead.

 

He couldn't remember that day, not a minute of it... but...

 

He'd never forgotten.

 

And he never would.

 

Not only was Shepard gone, but there was nothing of her left. Not so much as a word. He'd never thought about it, but... well.. he couldn't help but feel betrayed. Forgotten. Ignored. He'd been carrying a letter for her about on his omni-tool, carefully backed up with Alliance Command and his banker, too, for good measure... for longer than he cared to admit, even now... when it couldn't possibly begin to matter. He'd thought...

 

It wasn't like her.

Shepard was prepared. She was always prepared.

 

So she was silent...

but could he bring himself to admit he'd already finished that thought?

 

She had left no word to anyone on the squad, not even Garrus or Liara... as far as he could tell from what little he'd seen and heard... not even her parents...

 

It was as if she'd believed the myth of her own invulnerability even further than he or Garrus ever had... believed it to the point of allowing into to evolve into insensitivity to those she loved... those who loved her most. And if she'd done that...

 

it was like losing the woman he'd loved all over again to believe she could ever be so blind... she'd always seemed so acutely aware of his feelings... of the feelings of people she'd never even met... the woman he'd loved was sympathetic, empathetic...and she was gone... gone without a trace.

 

Grief howled through him like the void, endless and unfilled.

 

 


	12. Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard sees the light.

Light.

Bright white.

Searing.

Lancing through her closed eyes and into her skull.

 

She would have groaned, but...somehow...her body couldn't quite produce the sound. She felt...submerged. Or maybe encased. In ice.

 

Or adrift.

In space.

She remembered...

space.

 

Space was dark...you were supposed to go toward the light when you died...but...

someone...an asari...in dark clothing...sprawled across the floor at her feet...said there was no light...someone was crying...Liara? Liara was crying...her mother was dead...Shepard remembered...

she was dying.

 

She opened her eyes.

 

Light burned through her like a star going nova. Or like a ship...her ship...exploding.

 

And slowly began to resolve itself into the image of something mundane...like a lamp. She frowned. That seemed...wrong...

 

She reached up...to embrace eternity or to move the damn lamp out of her face, she wasn't quite sure which...Once she figured that out, she imagined things might begin to make more sense.

 

A hand grabbed hers, pushed it back against something hard, cool, and smooth. The hand seemed alien, unfamiliar. Not one of her squad. Not one of her crew. What did that mean--was it good or bad they weren't here?

 

Words. More words. Names...something about waking...something about sedatives...

 

Slate blue eyes staring into hers with something like possession...something like concern...

 

She felt a flicker of confusion, a flicker of annoyance bordering on fear.

 

Darkness flowed over her...

There was no light.

 

There was nothing...and she gave into it with something like relief.

 

Sound.

A voice.

A name.

Shepard.

A familiar name.

Her name.

The voice wanted her to do something...

You have to get up.

 

She was lying on a cold, hard, slab. The stiffness in her neck, the knots in her shoulders, the ache in her back flared to life. She must have been lying there a very long time. She reached up and almost-absent-mindedly wrenched her jaw into place. Her skin felt rough and foreign beneath her fingers. She hauled herself upright, wincing at the lingering tenderness in her ribs.

 

Death certainly was uncomfortable.

 

And weirdly familiar.

 

Suiting up in armor, just as she had done every day of her life since she turned eighteen was almost unsettling, it was so surreal. A feeling only intensified by the realization that the armor was almost her armor.

 

Almost, but not quite.

 

It was black and grey with the bold red stripe on the shoulder...but...the plates were different, lighter. The material was different, too. And the N7 was missing from the collar. There was another insignia there in its place...one that she couldn't quite place...but that made her stomach lurch with unpleasant recognition on sight...as if she ought to remember...

 

The weapon was different, too. But its weight felt natural in her hand. Comfortable. Comforting.

 

The first sound of a mechanical voice gave her a jolt similar to the sight of the insignia on her armor. It was so...ordinary...expected...almost routine...and, yet, it was...different. These weren't geth, they were mechs.

 

It was a sad commentary on her life that geth would have been less confusing.

 

Still, mechs were as easy--if not easier--to destroy than geth.

 

Their absence made the rooms around her seem huge, echoing and empty.

Like space.

 

It was probably best not to think of that.

 

Still, she felt very, very alone...

and very, very exposed without Kaidan and Garrus on her three and nine.

 

Kaidan's face, a mask, frozen, staring, stricken.

 

The pods.

Joker.

Garrus.

Tali.

Liara.

 

They'd made it free and clear.

 

She knew they had.

 

She had to believe that.

 

But if they'd survived...where were they?

Why weren't they here?

 

Wherever here was...

 

 


	13. Absence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you don't know what you have until you notice its absence.

Shepard had seen Tali and that was something, something comforting.

 

It was...frustrating...to know she was headed into danger...

 

Maybe that just couldn't be avoided. After all, she'd be in danger when she rejoined the squad, too. Shepard knew that. But...when all was said and done, Shepard preferred to have her friends in danger at a proximity that allowed her to minimize the threat and run interference.

Given the quarian reaction to the mention of Cerberus, Shepard had expected TIM to be less than enthusiastic about Tali, and it hadn't escaped her attention that he had spoken as though he had the right to grant-or deny-Tali's eventual inclusion in the squad, but--whether TIMmy-boy was ready to acknowledge it or not--Tali had said she was willing to help once her mission was complete, and that settled that.

 

Shepard had known about Wrex. Well...sort of. She'd seen him off to Tuchanka herself, a little more than a week after the Battle of the Citadel. She hoped the fact he hadn't left meant his efforts to instill a new set of priorities in the krogan were seeing some success. If so, at least he was one friend she could think of as both happy and safe.

 

She missed Kaidan.

 

That was part of it.

 

She wanted to talk to him, hear him say her name. She wanted to see the corners of his dark hazel eyes crinkle with joy, watch the ends of his mouth quirk in that smile that wasn't a smile, but the promise of smile that drove her to distraction...an anticipation only heightened by the frequent lack of fulfillment.

 

From the moment she'd met him, before she'd even seen the suggestion, she'd been waiting for that smile.

 

She missed Kaidan...but...she wasn't surprised. She might have asked for him first, but she hadn't expected she'd be able to spend any extended amount of time with him...not yet.

If she'd been gone even a fraction of the time Cerberus claimed she had...and, unfortunately, Joker and Dr. Chakwas both made it sound as if Cerberus was completely on the up-and-up as far as that went...Kaidan would have been reassigned. Reassigned and on duty. Unable to drop everything and come running...however much she might wish he would.

 

However much he might like to...and there was a chance he might not. Not anymore.

 

Even if it had been less than two years, even if he hadn't forgotten whatever might once have been between them...duty had always come first with him. And it always would. Kaidan was a career man. The Alliance Navy was part-and-parcel of who he was...she couldn't ask him to compromise that.

 

Sometimes...she wished he would focus a little more on demonstrating his feelings for her and on maintaining the status quo a little less. After all, she sincerely doubted the Alliance wanted to give itself a black eye by criticizing humanity's first and only Spectre for breaking regs. Even if she was still technically Alliance...and they couldn't punish him for fraternization without dragging her into it.

 

But she didn't want to ask.

 

Still, she wanted--she needed--to talk to him, at least.

 

Hell...she still could...TIM couldn't--or, she suspected, _wouldn't_ \--help, but all she had to do was try Kaidan's old Alliance contact info. And Anderson's. And Hackett's. One of them had to hit. No need to panic.

 

Liara working for the Shadow Broker was more of a shock...if it was true. But, honestly, Liara had spent most of the chase after Saren shipside, digging through her own research and the Prothean data discs periodically recovered by the squad. If the search for the Reapers was now about the Collectors and not about the Protheans, the asari would probably be neither particularly interested nor particularly useful.

 

They were friends, and Shepard would love to see her again and catch up on old times...when the immediate threat was neutralized.

 

At least TIM had been able to tell her where to begin looking when she had time.

 

And that was what was bothering her...or who, really.

 

Garrus.

 

She'd asked about him right after Kaidan. Barely waited for an answer, in fact, because, she'd already expected Kaidan to be out of reach, but Garrus...Garrus would always be ready-and-willing to throw caution to the wind and lend her a hand when she needed it.

 

He was her friend. Her partner in non-regulation law enforcement, if not crime.

 

At least, she'd begun to think of him that way...and she'd thought...maybe...he had, too.

 

It bothered her...very much, actually, that even TIM couldn't tell her where he was. Not even as vaguely as he'd placed Liara or Kaidan.

 

She almost hoped he could and simply wouldn't...because Cerberus didn't like or trust aliens...or even because he was trying to control her by keeping her isolated from her friends...which seemed a bit less likely given the presence of Joker and Doctor Chakwas on the ship...but...

 

Even if that was part of it, a man who claimed information was his business was unlikely to cultivate the appearance of ignorance where it could be avoided. She tended to believe TIM would have placed Garrus...if he could.

 

If he couldn't...well, with luck, that was merely because Garrus was out-and-about on Spectre business, and keeping a low profile...though given her own experiences while they were chasing Saren, he'd have to be a miracle worker to manage it.

 

As a member of the Council, Anderson ought to have some idea how a Spectre could be contacted.

 

She wanted it to be that easy. But she had a nagging suspicion in the pit of her stomach that Garrus was far more...missing...than that.

 

She hoped he was okay and feared he wasn't.

 

If the fate of humanity--and possibly all of galactic civilization--wasn't at stake again--or was it still?--she would have begun looking for him immediately. As it was...well...she was still tempted.

 

She might have done it. If she had known where to begin.

 

Aside from contacting Anderson. Which she would do.

 

She didn't believe it would do any good.

 

Still, Garrus couldn't have vanished. Not really. Not completely.

 

She'd just have to start looking for some way to find him. Maybe she could delegate. It would be something to distract her new yeoman from trying to discuss how she was "adjusting" to her "new situation" every few minutes.

  
Shepard smiled wryly, feeling a sudden spark of faint-but-definite satisfaction.


	14. How Much of Myself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard tries to come to terms with missing two years of her life, being isolated from everyone she loved and trusted, the cipher, Saren, and, oh, yeah, that bit about how she died.

Her stomach hollowed with realization as she walked under the stars, time so slow it ceased to exist--or at least to matter--her own breath rasping in her ears.

 

The world--her world--had ended; she couldn't save it.

 

How could space be so quiet, so calm, so empty, so unscarred, so...so _unmoved_?

 

She looked into infinity and saw Kaidan's face. She didn't know if she was comforted or terrified by the sight.

 

She could feel Joker's arm, solid muscles sliding and bunching over something light and hollow, something fragile and precious...like life...within the unbridled violence of her grasp. She could hear him shouting, but the ground was suddenly shifting beneath her feet, the words didn't make any sense...

 

There was a blinding flare of white light, and she was spiralling into it...or through it...

 

Shepard woke with a stifled scream, her heart pounding in her ears as if desperate to escape.

 

The icy blue glow of the fish tank washed over her, eerily reminiscent of Alchera...

 

As if that weren't waking nightmare enough, the low blue light reminded her of the blue glow of Saren's biotics in that final battle on the Citadel, the glow of an undead, mechanical monster, the puppet of a Reaper.

 

_Bio-synthetic fusion. Cybernetics._ The words burrowed through her scalp and crawled along her spine. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Saren burning blue against the lids. He'd used those words to describe himself... _a synthesis of organic and machine_... Saren who'd been augmented by Sovereign and betrayed everything he'd promised to protect...though the betrayal seemed to have begun long before the augmentation.

 

"Cause and effect in a hell of mess," she rasped aloud. Her voice echoed through the loft, reverberated off her spine and made her shiver.

 

Saren who'd been working with ExoGeni...who'd been involved with experiments on Thorian Creepers and Rachni...both of which she'd found lurking in bases associated with Cerberus.

Coincidence was a funny thing, and could be a powerful force indeed, but...but this seemed a bit too symmetrical, a bit too-planned, to be nothing more than coincidence. And that terrified her beyond belief.

 

Because if Cerberus had ties to Saren...and Saren had ties to the Reapers...well... that was a seriously tangled web. _And the more I fight it, the more trapped in it I seem to become._

 

Her heart was still pounding. She was beginning to feel faint-but-definite tremors of it through her head, a sensation Kaidan had mentioned more than once, and one that--all empathy aside--she'd never had the slightest desire to experience.

 

More irritating than the incipient migraine, however, was the lurking knowledge that they'd be arriving at Omega station in a few hours. Neither the Illusive Man nor his dossiers had led her to believe she'd need to be combat-ready just to approach a couple of recruits...but neither the Illusive Man nor his dossiers had led her to believe she should expect anything other than a fight.

 

And...in her experience, everything was a fight. Every. Goddamn. Thing.

 

"Life," she informed herself, rubbing her temples, "is war." Her fingers dipped down over her eyebrow...and the thin scar bisecting it wasn't there, not anymore. _One I've already lost._

 

Light flickered at the corners of her vision.

 

She kicked her feet free of the blankets.

 

"Shepard?" EDI queried before she could speak. "Are you unwell? You seem agitated."

 

"Unwell?" Shepard repeated sardonically. She rolled her eyes and immediately wished she hadn't. Damn, but that hurt. "Yeah. You could say that."

 

"Are you in need of assistance?" EDI's consideration might be nothing more than programming, yet another reminder of Cerberus' interest in protecting their investment, but Shepard couldn't quite squelch a slight twinge of guilt. If Shepard hated or feared what she had become, that was hardly EDI's fault. The AI was only doing her job, and doing it well...something Shepard normally would have approved.

 

And, oddly enough, the AI had just offered her the very thing she wanted.

 

"Actually, EDI, that's not such a bad idea." she said slowly. "I doubt I'm in any immediate danger, but I would like Doctor Chakwas' opinion."

 

"Very well, Shepard."

 

"Uh--EDI? At her convenience. There's no need to wake her up or anything."

 

Shepard eased back onto her pillows and closed her eyes, determined to put the problem of herself aside until Chakwas could look her over and assess the risk. She could be Chakwas' problem, at least temporarily, but Omega station and whatever challenges it might bring would be hers to address, and--come hell or highwater--she was going to set foot on that station rested, refreshed, and ready for whatever it might--whatever it would--throw at her.

 

She'd just begun to relax when the door to the loft hissed open.

 

She jerked upright, snatching the pistol from her nightstand and training it on the door in one smooth motion as swiftly and naturally as taking a breath.

 

"I doubt you invited me up here just to shoot me," Chakwas observed. Shepard thought--not for the first time--that the dry good cheer in the doctor's voice was as soothing as a good dose of medigel.

 

"EDI--"

 

"Didn't wake me," Chakwas interrupted smoothly. "And helping you is hardly what I would call inconvenient, Commander. Didn't I tell you it was exactly what I'd been missing?"

 

"Well, in that case," Shepard dropped the pistol back onto the nightstand with a clatter, "it's about damn time you got here."

 

"Oh, Shepard," Chakwas chuckled. "I have missed you."

 

"Thanks for coming," Shepard added, inscrutably polite, which only increased the apparent amusement of the doctor.

 

"My pleasure," the doctor assured her, more amused than ever. "Now. What seems to be bothering you? Is the implants?"

 

"After a manner of speaking," Shepard returned. "I'm not sure it's the smartest thing I've ever done, asking you where we're under obvious surveillance..." Shepard shot a look at the empty space where EDI's blue avatar had been not long before, "but...considering I wouldn't even have made it out of that damned research facility if Miranda hadn't been watching every step I took, Cerberus already knows I took as many of their files as I could manage...And I made a point of telling Miranda, Jacob, and that damned creepy excuse of holographic man that I don't trust them...and would love any excuse not to cooperate...so, really, if I didn't ask, they'd only be disappointed...Doctor...just how much of myself am I? Really? What did they do to me?"

 

 


	15. The Best Bridge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just when things seem to be looking up, a gun ship blows them all to hell.

A dark shape passed over the window like a rock rolled before a tomb. Shepard shuddered violently, confused by the image, confused by her reaction to it. And then realization dawned.

 

The gunship.

 

Garrus must have realized it, too. He was scrabbling back for cover even as she drew breath to warn him.

 

She wasn't fast enough, and neither was he.

 

A hail of bullets thudded over him.

 

The room went silent, as if sound had been severed from it. The silence grasped her by the throat like an old nemesis; the death of sound, the sound of death.

 

Garrus righted himself, staggered toward cover.

 

Sound returned with a roar, a sound worse than silence. Worse than death...well, worse than her death, at least.

 

"No, Garrus!" she screamed, or she tried to, but she couldn't breathe. There was no air. Her throat was tight...with fear or grief...maybe both...her chest burned.

 

Time slowed.

 

Garrus fell to the floor, but the floor was moving, spiraling out from under her feet. She was falling...falling...lost...

 

She'd failed. Again. She didn't want to live with the consequences.

 

And she wasn't about to give Tarak the satisfaction of allowing him to live with them, either. He might have defeated them; he might have killed Garrus, and destroyed her fledgling sense of surviving self, but he hadn't won. And he wasn't going to win. She wasn't about to let him. She wasn't going to fail Garrus that far. She wasn't going to fail him again.

 

Not ever again.

 

Completely oblivious to Miranda's attempt to reach out and pull her to safety, Shepard vaulted up and over the couch offering her and Garrus some poor cover with one hand, ripping the missile launcher from its slot in her armor with the other. Her feet hadn't even touched the ground when she began to fire, pounding off four shots in quick succession without much caring where--or what--they hit.

 

The gunship broke into a ball of fire, shrapnel pounded off the bridge and walls, rained into the windows.

 

Shepard later discovered she had slapped the missile-launcher back into place through sheer habit...she might have thrown the it aside for all she knew at the time...She skidded over to Garrus, dropping down beside him.

 

He was still, so still.

 

Emotion crushed in on her from all sides. She felt suffocated.

 

She had some vague idea of closing his eyes in benediction.

 

She reached out to touch him in farewell as he hadn't allowed her to touch him in greeting.

 

Her hand was shaking.

 

Some small part of her that passed for rational observed that would make it considerably harder to put a bullet in her own cold, dead, brain. The rest of her didn't even register her own irritation. She swayed slightly, dizzy. Her fingers dipped, brushed warm, rough plating.

 

Garrus gasped, a deep gurgling breath.

 

"Garrus!" she cried, pleading, exulting, commanding.

 

He opened an eye, his hand grasping reflexively for the barrel of his rifle. In that moment, one small, pain-dulled blue orb held all eternity.

 

Miranda crowded in close, running her omni-tool over the turian, keying in the most efficacious applications of medi-gel as quickly as she could.

 

"Garrus," Shepard breathed. "Stay with me." Her omni-tool glowed to life. "Joker," she rasped. "We are in need of emergency medical evac."

 

Jacob pressed in close, too, studying the turian for the best places to apply pressure and help slow the bleeding. "He looks bad," Jacob murmured to Miranda.

 

Shepard's head snapped back and she glared in a way that made them both stiffen. " _Now_ , Joker," Shepard hissed.

 

She didn't hear Joker's reply.

 

Jacob had to bump her with his shoulder before she noticed the shuttle had arrived, hovering at the window with its door ajar.

 

Doctor Chakwas was leaning out, offering them a low, thin stretcher.

 

She wasn't sure if she helped her team lift Garrus onto the stretcher or not. She was barely aware of shifting to the side a bit, just enough to let Miranda activate the stretcher's hover capabilities. Miranda and Jacob guided the stretcher to the window. Shepard followed, her whole body strangely numb.

 

"Garrus," she murmured, twining her fingers through his around the barrel of his rifle until they were all inextricably entangled.

 

"Garrus?" Chakwas repeated. She would never have recognized him. In spite of years in service to the Alliance--she hadn't really learned to easily differentiate one turian from another, but she'd spent a lot of time patching holes in the hide of one Garrus Vakarian. She should have recognized him. "He doesn't look good."

 

"Tell me about it," Jacob agreed as the shuttle door opened. "And she doesn't look much better," he muttered darkly.

 

Startled, Doctor Chakwas glanced up from her patient. And stared in surprise.

 

Shepard knew it was best to pick the person with the right skills for the job, then stand back and let them do it. She was standing back now; she didn't try to interfere, but even standing off to the side, she hovered.

 

And Shepard never hovered.

 

Her face was more drawn than Chakwas had ever seen it, and she had seen it after Shepard had taken some pretty terrible hits. Her previously-faint scars were raw and livid, crackling under her pale skin, all but sparking where they intersected other lines, dull and silvery like the tracks of tears. The edges of Shepard's grey eyes were limned in red, the pupils so shiny they looked like the flare of an exploding drive core.

 

As Jacob moved the stretcher away from her, tugging Garrus' hand from her grasp, Shepard wound her hands together, pulling them in opposite directions with such unthinking violence Chakwas was afraid she would snap a finger.

 

Jacob looked past them both, to Miranda. Miranda gave him a nod in answer, a nod only someone who knew her as well as he did would recognize as a nod at all.

 

As Shepard emerged from the shuttle, following the stretcher almost blindly, Miranda reached out and touched her shoulder. Grasped her shoulder, actually. Firmly.

 

Shepard jumped. "Get away from me," she snapped, wheeling toward Miranda as if to strike. "Get..." She waved her arms wildly, "over there. You--you-- _fixed_ me. So get over there and be of some _use_...fix... _him_..." Her head lulled forward and her eyebrows went up. Her eyes narrowed. “betternnew..." she slurred fiercely, but heavily. For a moment it seemed as though she was about to say something else, then she slumped heavily into Miranda's arms.

 

Miranda eased her to the cargo bay floor with surprising gentleness. "Jacob, why don't you escort the Commander to her quarters?" She said almost conversationally as she slid the empty hypodermic injector back into her belt. "I'll accompany the doctor and her patient. I believe," she added, her voice cool with irony, "I'll... _get over there_ and see if my skills might be of _use_."

 

 


	16. Unarmored

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard finds herself struggling to deal with the sudden awareness of vulnerability, both her own and on behalf of Garrus. Joker helps by being the one normal thing in a world turned upside down.

Nightmares.

 

As little as Shepard enjoyed the images that troubled her, they had been the constant companions of her resting hours for so long she simply tended to regard the time as being _for as long as she could remember_.

 

It wasn't true, of course. Not technically.

 

She certainly remembered a time before Akuze. But the memory seemed so distant as to be detached, almost unreal.

 

The feeling reminded her strongly of waking up in that Cerberus lab, feeling her surroundings--not to mention the situation--were both typical and completely inexplicable. She wondered--and she worried--about whether or not the armor--familiar and unfamiliar at once--she'd donned would come to seem more natural to her than the armor it had replaced. Worse, she was certain she already knew the answer, and it wasn't one she liked. But...that was life. It was survival. It was one of the few certain things in a very uncertain existence. So...in a way, that damned armor was the most comforting thing she had.

 

Except, of course, when she wasn't wearing it.

 

And she wasn't wearing it now.

 

Which was actually a bit surprising as she couldn't quite remember how she had ended up in bed at all... let alone wearing the comfortable-but-unyielding skintight underweave to her armor and not one of the tank-and-boxer combos or oversized t-shirts she usually slept in.

 

That, coupled with the strange, pressing silence of her sleep, the absence of her nightmares, was unsettling in the extreme.

 

Her head felt full of cotton-wool, dark, heavy, silent.

 

Her heart felt full of lead, sinking into her stomach, making it churn in a way she didn't quite understand.

 

She stumbled out of bed, lurching toward the console of her armor locker. As might be expected, the rest of her armor was there, stowed away with obvious care, not exactly in the way she usually stored it--her belt, for example, was resting, folded, on top of her chest plate instead of coiled up and set aside with her boots and gloves--but absolutely gleaming, as if it had just been polished.

 

She didn't remember taking her armor off. She didn't remember storing it. She didn't even remember cleaning it--a long and tedious job--but...it seemed as though she did remember something...something buried deep within the stifling weight suffusing her skull and her limbs.

 

A flash of something...light?

A strangled scream.

Muffled groaning.

The smell of blood, distinct and definite, but faint.

 

Maybe her sleep hadn't been nearly as untroubled as it seemed. A bit disturbing, that the thought should be so reassuring.

 

Something about the smell--beyond its mere existence--bothered her, though she couldn't quite identify the source of her concern.

 

As for the question of her nightmares, well...they usually jerked her upright, right out of a deep, sound sleep.

 

It seemed, somehow, deeply ominous that the images should be so...subtle. So elusive.

 

Like the difference between a highly-trained infiltration team and a full-frontal assault; the action on Virmire compared to the Battle of Torfan. It wasn't hard to say which was bloodier, really, most violent. On the other hand, in the long-term scheme of things, she had a feeling she knew which was more effective, even more devastating to the other side.

 

The other side.

 

She looked around, startled, suddenly reminded of the alien space of the room she occupied.

 

The large, luxuriously-appointed room.

 

Clean, open, elegant.

 

The cramped little bed, scarcely more than a cot, regarded as such an honor on any Alliance vessel, replaced by a huge double bed. Fluffy pillows like rubble littering the floor of a building after an explosion. Rumpled black and white linens still showing evidence of their previous crisp cleanliness, in spite of what seemed to be some faint splotches of almost-blue discoloration...

 

She shuddered in surprisingly violent reaction, though a split second's reflection was already telling her it was probably a trick of the light, defraction from the large, empty aquarium that had so unsettled her sleep ever since she'd boarded this ship.

 

This ship.

 

The _Normandy_.

 

But _not_ her _Normandy_.

 

This ship didn't belong to her. It didn't even belong to the Alliance.

 

Cerberus.

 

A Cerberus ship. She was on a Cerberus ship.

 

Shepard shuddered again, harder, and wrapped her arms around herself without thinking, shrugging up her shoulders as if doing so would dislodge the tension that seemed to have settled over them.

 

A glint of light from the direction of the desk caught her eye.

 

The picture.

 

If she stepped forward, it would flicker into life as if it had never been extinguished. Kaidan's frozen face. His dark and tender eyes. His taunt, sensual mouth, suggesting, only suggesting, his small, sweet smile.

 

She wanted to step forward.

 

She wanted to turn away and pretend she had never seen it.

 

She wanted, more than anything, to know who had put it there...and why.

 

It could be, she wanted to believe it was intended to be, a kind gesture, meant to offer her some hope, some comfort, some consolation, a feeling of belonging in a strange place.

 

And it probably was.

 

Something Kelly might have done or, maybe even Miranda--odd as it was to think of the coolly-collected woman performing any action meant to impart a feeling of warmth--but whether the picture was intended as a kindness or not, Shepard couldn't help feeling unsettled at the sight of it, because when she saw Kaidan's face on her desk, all she could see was a sort of veiled threat, a reminder of how much Cerberus knew about her, about her past, about the people she cared for...people they could hurt if she didn't cooperate...and the Illusive Man may well have intended her to see just that.

 

Shepard huffed a sigh and reached up to rub the back of her neck. Her fingers came in contact with the warm, slightly rough surface of her undersuit, and memory seared through her like a shock of plasma.

 

Turian flesh under her fingers, warm and rough.

 

People who could get hurt.

People she cared for.

 

Her vision swam in and out of focus. The room swayed, looking black around the edges. She stumbled back and to the side until her back pressed against the wall. She slid along it until she managed to find the floor and sit on it, leaning forward just enough to rest her forehead on her knees. The sound of her own harsh breathing in her ears amplified, lilted, took on a strange harmonic resonance, became a short, choked gasp, repeated over and over like a prayer before dying.

 

_Garrus._

 

She could see a single blue eye looking up at her, dilating until it held all of eternity.

 

She hadn't realized she'd spoken aloud, but EDI's voice was lapping at the edges of the swirling vortex that threatened to engulf her and drag out, out and back, back into the void... "-rian,previously known to Cerberus only as Archangel, Operative Lawson has instructed me to inform you that--as of this time--he is still living."

 

Shepard released a lone, shivering sob. If she'd had the energy to care, she might have looked around sheepishly to see if EDI had noticed, but the AI continued to speak. Shepard let the words wash over her like the lapping waves of the Elysian Sea, until her body felt nearly boneless with relief.

 

"Although she did not mention it, her current vital signs would seem to indicate that Operative Lawson is nearing exhaustion. This is not surprising, as she has been on her feet since you departed the ship at 0600. I believe she may have observed that this is one of many reasons why it would have been wise to recruit Mordin Solus previous to any other potential operatives. As she did not enunciate clearly, however, I'm afraid I may have extrapolated her meaning incorrectly. She insists quite clearly, however, that she will remain as she is, in Medbay, until Dr. Chakwas has no further need for her services."

 

"Tell them I'm on my way," Shepard said as crisply as she could manage, and hauled herself upright to yank on the zipper of her undersuit. The weave peeled away from her skin slowly, releasing a faint miasma of the same blood-smell she'd been vaguely aware of earlier. Now she realized the oddity she'd thought she'd detected was probably the smell of copper instead of iron.

 

Giving herself a firm injunction not to think about it, she put the undersuit in the laundry drawer of the armor locker, hauled out standard shipwear boots-and-utes and began applying them.

 

"I cannot," EDI said. Shepard blinked, wondering if she'd simply projected that faint suggestion of regret onto the AI's level voice.

 

"Something wrong with med-com?" Shepard asked rhetorically.

 

"All systems are functioning properly at this time," EDI said, sounding almost smug. "However, Operative Lawson-"

 

"Just who runs this ship?" Shepard snapped. "Me or Lawson?"

 

"You do. Commander Jane Shepard is named Acting Captain, Operative Miranda is named Acting XO, by order of the Illusive Man."

 

Shepard made a garbled noise of frustration. If she hadn't been simultaneously terrified for Garrus and outraged with Miranda, she might have been amused.

 

"Look, Commander, no one wants you calling the shots more than I do," Joker's voice intervened, making her jump, bumping her shoulder into the bulkhead. _Some things_ , some small part of her thought wryly, _never change. And thank god for that._ Some days, she'd take what she could get. This was definitely one of those times. _Hell, it's one of those lives_ , she thought, a little more consciously, and snorted around a wry grin.

 

"But Operative Lawson--and her annoying little watchdog, here, too--are right about this one. You're no medic. Even if you were, doctors aren't supposed to operate on family. Your old squad...we’re your family. We were damn proud of it."

 

"Dammit, Joker," Shepard hissed, taking a deep breath, sagging back against the bulkhead, one boot still clutched in her hand. "What did you have to go and say something like that for?"

 

"You mean something you can't argue with?" Joker's smug grin was apparent even through the audio feed.

 

"You know I do," she said and sighed.

 

"Just one of the many duties you keep me around to perform," he retorted. "You'd be lost without me, you know."

 

"Huh. I knew there was a reason I'd saved your ass," she said flippantly, then froze as the silence on the other side of the com channel changed. "Shit, Joker, I didn't mean--"

 

"Yeah, sure, Commander, I know."

 

Shepard shrugged her shoulders again and dropped her boot.

 

"And, uh, Commander?"

 

Shepard grunted shortly, both afraid of saying the wrong thing and preoccupied with the removal of her other boot.

 

"Thanks. For saving my ass."

 

Shepard snorted. "Makes us one-for-three doesn't it? I'd say I still owed you. Probably always will."

 

"And don't you forget it," Joker quipped, sounding more like his old self. "I might want to collect."

 

"Well," Shepard said, smiling in spite of the ache in her heart and the fear in her gut, "you know what they say."

 

"What would that be, Commander?"

 

"A man's gotta dream."


	17. Two Pains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unexpected quarantine has Shepard and Garrus both off balance, and at unexpected odds.

"It's up to you, Commander," Garrus said, but he knew what he wanted and he figured she did, too. Shepard always took the opinions of her crew into account when she made her decisions.

 

"If you need me, I'm not going to let a cough keep me back," he said anyway, just to make it clear. He had little doubt of what would happen, because it was what had always happened. What would _always_ happen. _Just like old times_.

 

Shepard's eyes met his for moment, steady and assessing. She tilted her chin slightly, almost imperceptibly, a gesture he'd long since come to recognize as a sort of affirmation. A sign of agreement. But when she moved, she stepped forward, brushing past him as she stepped away from the quarantine zone and back toward the dock.

 

Garrus stared after her, unmoving, confused. Something was wrong somewhere. This wasn't right. She'd never left him behind before. _Never._  Except...he turned away from that current before thought could take wing. A small, traitorous part of his mind whispered that she'd never walked into a situation in which he might be in more danger than any other member of her crew before, either, but he scarcely noticed behind the roaring surge of his own breath.

 

The human in the Cerberus uniform--Jacob?-- cast Garrus a glance that might have been sympathetic, or maybe just bemused, and strode after Shepard.

 

They were nearly around the corner when Garrus realized Shepard either hadn't noticed his hesitation or was just ignoring it. The latter, if he knew her as well as he thought he did. She wasn't going to stop, wasn't going to turn back. Well, that was like her, even if her sudden about-face was completely alien.

 

Grudging, he moved, his long legs closing the distance easily. "Shepard--"

 

"EDI," Shepard said as if she hadn't heard him, though he knew full well she might be speaking to the ship, but she was responding to him, "inform Operative Lawson of the situation, and ask her to be ready and waiting when we arrive. Officer Vakarian will serve as acting XO in her absence."

 

Garrus huffed in exasperation. Shepard ignored him. Studiously. He felt a surge of something very much akin to rage. He was vaguely aware of Jacob eyeing him warily, the muscles in his arm tensing slightly, preparing to pull his shotgun in less than a heartbeat, if necessary.

 

Any other time, Garrus would have been approving, if mildly amused. Now he was simply annoyed. He would never hurt Shepard; he damn well wanted to protect her, that was the problem.

 

As if catching wind of his thought, Shepard turned her head toward him and smiled, just a fraction. It was a sad smile, but there was something else behind the sadness, something Garrus didn't quite recognize. "Chin up, Vakarian, you won't be missing much. Just the Blue Suns and some vorcha--nothing you haven't seen before."

 

The tall, graceful woman in white was walking toward them, her heels clicking on the plated floor of the dock. Coming to take his place.

 

Garrus bit down on his irritation, determined to keep his attention on the root of the problem. "Shepard. All the more reason--"

 

Shepard's grey eyes flashed like lightning across the heated summer sky on Palaven. "Dammit, Garrus," she said, forgetting to be the Commander, forgetting to be formal, "where I come from, no means _no_! I-- _we_ \--can't afford to--" the words twisted and clogged in her throat, finally breaking off completely.

 

"Too close," she whispered, so faintly he wondered he doubted the Cerberus Operatives, both waiting at the end of the corridor, pretending not to stare as politely as they could manage, could hear. In fact, he wondered if she could. And if she couldn't...did she even know she what she was saying?

 

She cleared her throat and squared her shoulders. "--to be slowed down by some stupid disease," she continued more audibly, as if she'd never hesitated. Never interrupted her own sentence. "Especially one that can be easily avoided," she added pointedly. "We-- _I_ \--need you.

So get on the damned ship--and that's an order, Vakarian."

 

He was left without a weapon to bring to the fight. "Fine,"Garrus snarled and sprang toward the ship, "if that's the way you want it."

 

 


	18. Chapter 18

Williams had once described an odd place where the spirits of human dead gathered to wait for many years and were punished for their misdeeds in life in order to be free of them before moving on to the eternity beyond. _And now those spirits I intend to show/ Who purge themselves beneath thy guardianship._ (1.66), she'd said, reciting part of a poem. She'd had to explain so the quote would make sense...and he wasn't sure it did, even then.

 

But it did now.

 

Omega had begun to explain it to him, perhaps better than he'd liked. Not just in the lives the of the people he saw there,suffering every day, but in the way he'd appointed himself their guardian, as if doing something, anything, remotely good, would somehow make things right. Somehow provide him with enough wisdom and experience to find a way to make the Council reconsider. To force them to stop hiding behind their regulations and their rules and face the facts. About the Reapers. About justice. About Shepard.

 

He'd let her walk away without him once, and he'd been left behind.

 

_Along the solitary plain we went / as one who unto the lost road returns,/ and till he finds it seems to go in vain._ (1.120), he could almost hear Williams making yet another of her sardonic observations over his shoulder.

 

Williams was right.

 

He'd tried to catch up, tried to follow the Commander as he always had, off into the mists of time and, by some impossible act of the spirits, she'd turned back into the clear blue present, pulling him along with her.

 

But now, standing in the airlock of a ship that was--and was not--the one to which he'd longed to return, he couldn't help feeling fear in every hollow of his bones.

 

She'd walked away. He'd _let_ her walk away, and he'd be left behind. Again.

 

Maybe this time for good.

 

The spirits tended to get vengeful when they felt their gifts weren't being properly appreciated, after all. Not that he could blame them.

 

His fear superseded the shock of seeing her again at all, against all the odds.

 

And as shock ebbed, pain was setting in.

 

The pain of losing her.

The pain of losing the only cause he'd ever been allowed to fight for as well as believe in...

And the pain of losing his team.

 

His failure, his fault...that had certainly taught him something of how the great and burning desire to atone could become so visceral, so immediate, so tangible, that it trapped you and held you more tightly than the best restraints C-Sec had ever devised.

 

_The blow so great, that they despaired of pardon._ (1.11-2) He heard Williams speak the words like a benediction. Soberly, somberly. Maybe even tenderly.

 

The expression on Shepard's face as she gazed through the viewport at the blazing light that spread and pooled beneath them on Virmire and throughout the first few days that followed flickered through his memory, dousing his anger at her refusal to let him follow her into quick and sputtering death.

 

His urge to turn and run after her in defiance of her orders remained, but...he'd already sacrificed more than enough dignity for the day.

 

And for all the days to come.

 

He had no idea how he was going to make amends.

 

A red-headed woman was waiting for him just inside the airlock.

 

Garrus was no expert on human expressions, but he had the impression that hers was almost unnaturally warm and friendly. It made him feel rather like a pyjak being greeted by a varren.

"Officer Vakarian?" She thrust a hand toward him. "Kelly Chambers. Commander Shepard's Yeoman."

 

Garrus eyed her hand warily, trying to remember what the gesture meant, then snatched it a bit precipitately as he remembered. He was supposed to clasp it in his own hand and jiggle it a bit-- "shake" he believed the humans called it. An odd ritual by way of greeting, if you asked him, but, of course, no one had.

 

"I don't suppose the Commander has had time to mention me yet," the woman added, a trifle awkwardly, though that might just have been because his _shake_ seemed to have thrown her a bit off-balance. "She hasn't had a chance to tell me much about you, either, but I'm very happy to see you."

 

"Happy?" Garrus repeated, confused. Shepard hadn't seemed particularly happy to have him back on her team when she was ordering him back onto the _Normandy_ , and even if she was happy to have him keeping an eye on the ship, why would this woman care? She didn't even know him. She probably couldn't tell him apart from any other turian in Omega.

 

Maybe it was just nostalgia, but he didn't remember having this much trouble understanding the human crew--let alone the Commander--the last time he was on the _Normandy_. On _**a** Normandy_. He _had_ to be hallucinating. Dementia had set in. The end was nigh.

 

At least he'd gotten to see Shepard again, though if anyone had asked him ahead of time, he'd never have guessed this would be how he'd imagine their reunion. So maybe it was real? If so, that missile must have scrambled his senses.

 

Oh. The missile.

 

"Ah. Yeah, I think I owe Dr. Chakwas for that."

 

"What?" The Yeoman looked nearly as confused as Garrus felt. "Oh. Your injuries." Her expression cleared, though it still looked a bit...inquisitive. "I'm sure seeing you well is all the thanks Dr. Chakwas wants or needs. We're all very pleased she and Operative Lawson were able to save your life, though, of course, we wish we'd been able to prevent your injuries in the first place, but I don't know how Commander Shepard and her team could have gotten to you any sooner.

 

"I mean, the Commander had barely been back from the dead for a day before she was asking The Illusive Man where you were. She's had me scouring space with a toothbrush, looking for you, ever since she arrived on board. I was beginning to think Alliance High Command would call me out for treason if I so much as wrote another letter. Come to that, they probably still will..." she trailed off, "Unless..." she paused hopefully... "I don't suppose you're still in touch with Lt. Alenko?"

 

"Staff _Commander_ Alenko," Garrus corrected.

 

"Ah."

 

Garrus wasn't entirely sure he liked the way those laser-bright green eyes seemed to bore into him, unearthing events--and feelings--he'd thought gone and buried.

 

The red-head waited just long enough for it to be uncomfortably apparent he had no intention of volunteering any information to fill the silence. "So...Commander Shepard left you in charge of a ship you haven't really seen yet, right? I'd be happy to show you around."

 

Garrus wasn't at all sure he'd be _happy_ to spend that much more time with this bright, brittle female, but if he didn't do _something_ , he'd go mad waiting on Shepard to return, wondering whether or not she'd died...again, wondering why she'd left him here, wondering if he'd imagined the whole unlikely thing...not that seeing the ship could really confirm the reality for him, but at least it would be a distraction...

 

 


	19. A Ghost and A Lullaby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard returns to the Normandy after a day fighting through an area quarantined for plague and worrying about the still-recuperating Garrus.

The scent of burning flesh was sizzling in her nose, searing its way between her sinuses, making her eyes blur with tears. Shepard blinked impatiently, irritated with her own weakness, and saw, in that sliver of a second, a turian sprawled at her feet, still reaching for life with stiff, still hands.

 

She could hardly reach the main battery fast enough.

 

The doors seemed to take ages to hiss slowly open.

 

Garrus was hunched over the console, whole--well as whole as the last time she'd seen him, at least--and breathing, and _alive_.

 

Her heart pounded like a kettle drum. She clutched her fingers around her sweaty palms, trying to cling to something...something she couldn't quite name.

 

She thought maybe Garrus was too. There was something about his posture that was different...something sad. As if standing upright took all the will he could muster, leaving him barely enough to lift his hand.

 

"All right, Garrus?" It seemed to her she had never asked a question as complicated. Nor one with an answer she more wanted to hear.

 

But she had...she remembered.

 

She had asked him this same question once before, when she'd first caught sight of him in that abandoned building, under siege, but undefeated. Or, at least, she'd thought so then. Now...now, she wasn't so sure. And the realization terrified her almost as much as that damned gunship.

 

Garrus steadied himself against the gunnery console, struggling to maintain his grip on the thin veneer of calm acceptance he'd managed to cobble together in the past few hours. "As well as can be expected," he assured her slowly. "The crew has been friendlier than I anticipated; being part of the team that took down Saren must have earned me some respect--"

 

just not from the one person whose respect he'd most wanted, the one person whose respect he had always been able to take for granted...until today.

 

He was being unfair. He knew he was being unfair. He'd realized before he'd made it past the airlock. Sometimes, in spite of intelligence, in spite of training, in spite of knowledge, you couldn't control how you felt. You could only control how you acted...which she had been able to do...and he hadn't.

 

The thought filled him with shame, and the shame filled him with rage, though he could have scarcely have named a target. Except, perhaps, himself.

 

His whole damned culture was built on the idea of discipline, and he hadn't been able to practice it. He hadn't even been able to respect hers.

 

In fact, even now, he _still_ resented her calm, her control, her orders... and he could feel fear lurking, like a ghost, behind his shame, behind his bitterness.

 

Turning to face her was, quite possibly, the hardest thing he had ever done.

 

Shepard was waiting, just standing there, arms folded across her chest, weight distributed on the balls of her feet, but tilted back, just slightly. She was looking him full in the face, and the look was...not soft...but...accepting. Steady. Open. Without censure.

 

Time fell away, and for just a moment, a single flutter of a single heartbeat, he was spirited back to a cramped little med clinic, a dead merc at his feet, and the whole universe unfurling wide with possibility so that the deck felt almost unsteady beneath his feet.

 

"We're all adults here," he said. It was as close to an apology as he could manage...and as close to forgiveness, too. He hoped she knew that. By the blasted spirits, he hoped she _understood_ it. "We'll do what needs to be done."

 

"Of course," she said crisply, almost off-hand. A faint smirk hovered over the wide, slashing line of mouth. Her lips were soft and fleshy, strangely pliable and pink, but the line of them...that was nearly turian. Perhaps that was why her expressions always seemed so clear to him...like lines in a lullaby from childhood.

 

He might not be able to recite the lyrics, but he could recognize the notes. And know with a knowledge humming in the very depths of his bones that she had never she had never doubted that. She had never doubted him.

 

This...this was Shepard, beyond all rhyme, beyond all reason, beyond all doubt.

 

"I was...I am..."

 _an idiot_.

 

"Just familiarizing myself with the new Normandy."

 

"A sound tactical maneuver," Shepard said, though with a bit more humor than Garrus would have expected the observation to warrant. "First move I made, too."

 

Garrus chuckled softly, anything but surprised.

 

Shepard shrugged slightly. She'd given up on surprising him long ago. "So...what do you think?"

 

He'd been trying not to, actually.

 

Trying not to think of her down there on that hellhole of a station, being shot at by a bunch of thugs who had no idea, no idea at all, of just what they were trying to destroy.

 

"Cerberus has spared no expense," he said, temporizing. "Maybe joining up with them is just what we need."

 

Shepard stiffened so quickly Garrus could hear her spine snap. "We are _not_ with Cerberus," she snarled. Garrus didn't think he'd ever heard her sound so angry. He wasn't sure he'd ever heard _any_ human sound so angry.

 

He splayed his hands out, rocking back on the heels of his feet in a turian gesture of sheepishness, submission. "Just a figure of speech, Shepard," he trilled as soothingly as he could manage. He'd never have expected she'd think otherwise, even for a second.

 

"Relax," he coaxed.

 

Some of the tension went out of her shoulders and she slumped against the console, her head hanging, heavy with dejection.

 

"Far be it for me to second guess your judgement," he said, speaking to the part of her posture he recognized, the part that reminded him of the embarrassed frustration he'd been feeling when she first arrived.

 

He'd always admired that about her, in fact.  Her judgement had fascinated him, drawn him in, inspired him. He'd thought she knew that. Every word, every action, he knew she thought about them all, and that thought, that care, drew each element tight into a web in which cause and effect had surprising results.

 

More than anything, when she was gone, he had missed that, the effect of her judgement. The way it had given him something he had never had before he'd met her, something he couldn't hold onto after she was gone.

 

The ability to make a difference.

 

More than anything, he'd thought that if he could just do that, just make a difference...he'd be honoring her memory, ensuring that someone, somewhere, would think of them both with respect.

 

The respect she deserved...the respect he desperately wanted to be able earn.

 

Her judgement had condemned Saren to a coward's death at his own hand, and her judgement had saved the Citadel... but his judgement..."got my entire squad killed," he said, the words rattling through the room just the way they seemed to echo in the hollows of his heart.

 

He didn't want to talk anymore.

 

He hoped he was lying dead on the floor of that slum, right where he belonged. He didn't want to dream. He had no right to dream.

 

He wished she wasn't there.

 

He had no idea what to say.

 

"Tell me about them," Shepard said.

 

He didn't want to.

 

He didn't want to think about them...He was so ashamed.

 

But, somehow, the words were spilling out of him, and he was telling her everything.

 

Confessing.

 

She listened without interrupting, without trying to soothe him with meaningless words, and he was grateful.

 

And, then, without warning, the words were gone.

 

"Look, Shepard, thanks for stopping by..."

 


	20. The Opposite of Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard and Garrus bond over the burdens of command and the fear of losing a good friend. The air is cleared; Shepard starts giving orders again.

The words were gone...

his squad was gone...

 

and Shepard remained, looking up at him with something...a look?...in her eyes that softened her entire face in a way he hadn't been expecting. The surprise of it hit him like charging krogan.

 

He leaned back against the console, hoping the sudden shaking in his knees and ankles wasn't obvious.

 

"I'll let you get back to work," Shepard said, without making a move toward the door. She didn't want to leave.

 

She'd been anxious about him before, anxious about him since she'd...since just before the first _Normandy_ had been lost.

 

And today, when she'd seen that damned plague...

 

It had been a savage satisfaction to put a bullet through the head of every vorcha in her line of sight. Even Miranda had seemed more-than-a-little impressed by her ruthless efficiency. But, satisfaction aside, she had barely been aware of who--or what--she shot. She was too preoccupied with the dead...and every corpse she saw wore Garrus Vakarian's face.

 

"I would like to get a better look at these guns," Garrus said awkwardly, clearing his throat.

 

"Of course," Shepard agreed as she took her first, reluctant, step. "Just..."

 

"Need something?" Garrus asked.

 

"The Professor should be joining us any time now," Shepard said.

 

"I figured as much," Garrus retorted, stepping forward and stretching out an arm as if to herd her toward the door. "Commander Shepard gets the job done."

 

"I want you to stop and see him as soon as he's been debriefed," she informed him.

 

"Is that really necessary?" Garrus asked a bit wearily. "I'm sure we'll have plenty of time to get acquainted while we're hunting down the...what was it again? The Collectors?"

 

The doors had begun to hiss open.

 

"Yes," she said, forcefully enough to draw him up short.

 

She stood just inside the open doors. Just within his reach. But she didn't move and she didn't look at him.

 

With every step she'd taken, all she had been able to think of was Garrus, Garrus by her side as they approached the quarantine zone...if the plague had managed to escape the barricade...Garrus dying...alone...again.

 

"You lost your squad...you need to grieve. I get it." She reached up and slapped one armored hand against her shoulder. "Oh, I get it. A hell of a lot better than I wish I did. I've lost people, too, Garrus. Jenkins...Ash...hell, I lost a whole damn _unit_ on Akuze--50 men, Garrus, 50."

Shepard took a deep breath, rolled her shoulder, pressed her hand against it again, took another breath, shook it off.

 

Garrus felt like a heel...and he resented it. Just because Shepard had already had these feelings...was that supposed to make it easier for him to deal with? And then he felt ridiculously petty, because, she was sharing her experience, something he'd always welcomed...and how was she to know this time was any different? How was he? He didn't know why this time was different...he just felt that...it was.

 

It was different.

 

"Shepard-"

 

"I know--I _know_ \--it wasn't the same for you," she whispered, her voice tremulous. "I know this wasn't what happened, but when I came to in that damned medbay... _alone_...and the last thing I remembered was the end...the end of everything...it felt the same to me. It was like I'd lost you—all of you...and I just didn't know if I could go on...That kind of..."

 

_failure_ , the word hovered there between them, unspoken, because to say it would have felt like an accusation.

 

To think it was an accusation, too, but one they'd made against themselves and could never escape, an accusation they acknowledged to themselves, and—without words, without the need for words—to one another...

 

They had to acknowledge it in order to move on...but they didn't have to say it. They never had to say it. Some things should not be said...some things should not be made so...real, so final...

 

"thing...It can—"

 

Garrus laughed, the sound a bit desperate. "Yeah, I know."

 

_break you if you. If you let it_.

 

She'd said the words aloud before, to Miranda, to Jacob...to whom she hadn't been ready to give any part of herself.

 

But to him, to Garrus, to whom she'd give anything—anything he asked—she couldn't say them, because...

 

Cerberus, even if only in the form of Jacob and Miranda—who both seemed likeable enough—deserved to bear the burden of what it had done in bringing her back, no matter what the reasons, but she didn't want Garrus to have to carry her pain.

 

She wanted him to let her help him carry his.

 

Her death had nearly broken him.

 

From what she'd just said, it had nearly broken _them_.

 

But they were together and they were holding together...for now. Barely, maybe, but they were.

 

Slowly, hesitantly, Garrus reached out and put a hand on her back, the way he'd seen Alenko do from time-to-time. He thought it was a gesture of comfort.

 

Well, whether or not Shepard agreed, the contact was strangely comforting to him.

 

"Hells, Garrus, when I saw you step out in front of that gunship, I thought..." she swallowed, hard. She hadn't meant to dump this on him, hadn't meant to confess. "You were only touch-and-go for a couple of days, but...it felt like a couple of centuries. I don't think I'll ever be the same.”

 

Shepard drew in a long, breath, turning it into an odd, snaky, shaky snicker. “It's a damn good thing you recovered, or I'd have had to kill you myself."

 

Garrus laughed. "And you wondered why I shot you."

 

Shepard's mouth twitched, "I assumed it was for cover."

 

Garrus snorted.

 

Shepard looked contrite. "I...I'm sorry Garrus, I never wanted to abandon you..." she turned slightly to the side, touching the armored fingers of her far hand to the armored fingers of his far hand.

 

"I know, Shepherd," he said, tightening both his hands, holding her just a bit tighter, reassuring...her, him, he scarcely knew. "I won't pretend I didn't miss you," he said slowly, searching for words. "...but I always knew you'd be there if you could."

 

_And you were there, after a fashion. I could see you if I closed my eyes...hear your voice in my head..._

 

"And now here you are. I don't know _how_ you're here--hell, I'm even a bit fuzzy on how _I'm_ here--but the means matter less than the facts. You're here and you're alive. And so am I. The last thing I want is to waste the time we have crying over the time we've lost."

 

"Lost," Shepard repeated thoughtfully, tasting the word on her tongue. She sighed, her entire body catching, rising and dropping in his arms like the tide. "That's the word for it, all right. Lost. I-I've never felt more abandoned or alone or _lost_ in my entire life-- _lives_ \--than when I woke up in the empty medbay of a base filled with security mechs programmed to kill any organic that moved--" she chuckled at the expression on Garrus' face "--without--without any of you."

 

"I'm here, Shepard," Garrus murmured uncomfortably, stroking his talons along the lines of armor banding the back of her waist. "I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere."

 

Shepard twisted slightly in his grasp, just enough to look up into his face. "Oh, yes, you damn well are."

 

Garrus felt his gizzard twist. He'd forgotten how damned good she was at producing that reaction. It was something he could have lived without remembering.

 

"You are going to see Doctor Solus," Shepard said firmly.

 

"Oh," Garrus grunted, relieved. "If that's all you want--"

 

Shepard tilted her head. The gesture was oddly turian. Garrus had the strangest impulse to lean down, just a little bit, and press the fanning plates of his forehead against the strange, broad, flat curve of hers. "No," she said seriously. "I wouldn't say that's all I want--"

 

Garrus groaned.

 

"But it will do to be getting along with," she told him, and smirked.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: This fic is an assortment of all sorts of scenes, dialogues and snippets relating to ME—1 through 3. These chapters will vary as to point of view. My (very vague) intention is to eventually assemble these bits and pieces into a more traditional narrative fic (probably to share the same title as I’ve gotten attached), but I imagine it will be a long time before that takes shape (if it ever does), and I didn't want to wait that long to begin posting my little bits of plot bunny fluff.
> 
> Fic Title Inspiration: Whole \Whole\, n. 1. The entire thing; the entire assemblage of parts; totality; all of a thing, without defect or exception; a thing complete in itself. [1913 Webster];  
> Parts answering parts shall slide into a whole. -Pope. [1913 Webster]
> 
> While I may not post on some of these fics for long periods of time, I have not abandoned any of them.


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